


All those who wander

by ealcynn



Series: A fire shall be woken [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ableist Language, Accidental overdose, Action/Adventure, Addiction, Angst, Anxiety, Bigotry & Prejudice, Chronic Pain, Council of Elrond, Depression, Drowning, Drug Abuse, Epic Friendship, Exile, Fellowship being good bros, Gaslighting, Gen, Honestly not as dark as it sounds, Hurt Legolas, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, It was meant to be uplifting I swear, Murder, Rivendell | Imladris, Scars, Suicidal Thoughts, selected mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ealcynn/pseuds/ealcynn
Summary: A strange Elf comes to the Council of Elrond. Once he was Legolas Greenleaf. Now he is one of the Bodadêldir - Faithless, the Oathbreaker - and Aragorn finds that nothing is as it seems.
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel & Legolas Greenleaf, Aragorn | Estel/Arwen Undómiel
Series: A fire shall be woken [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087940
Comments: 45
Kudos: 120





	1. 22nd October 3018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was all born out of the idle wonder of how the Fellowship arriving in Lorien would have been different if Legolas really had been exiled from Mirkwood after the events of the Hobbit, as is sort of implied by BoFA. The entire plot ended up going in a very different direction after that, never got as far as Lorien at all, and is very much bookverse. A grim AU is certainly not what I expected to be my first offering out of a revival of my first ever fandom but hey, 2020 was a strange year for all of us. I don't entirely know where this is going in the end but hopefully the journey will be of more value than the destination. 
> 
> Some dialogue is directly from Tolkien's works.

I

* * *

### 22nd October 3018

Imladris. Long the very memory of that sanctuary had been a balm to Aragorn, a succor and a strength, even when his own strength had failed and all the world around had seemed dark. But even so he had to acknowledge that he had never yet reached the Hidden Valley with such desperate gratitude as he had two nights’ ago after weeks in the wild, shepherding the hobbits from danger to danger, barely daring to sleep or rest for fear of the Nazgûl hunting them through the dark. But make it to Imladris they had, and last they were safe. At last there was respite. Their success had seemed hollow and empty as they had picked up Frodo’s body, pale and cold, from the banks of the Bruinen and borne him slowly to the house. Yet for all Pippin and Sam’s quiet weeping the hobbit was not dead, not yet, though Frodo was still desperately ill and it had taken all of Lord Elrond’s skills over the past two nights to keep him amongst the living. It seemed more than likely he may yet succumb to the wound. Then none could say what would become of him.

Like Frodo’s halfling companions, Aragorn had done little in the two days since they arrived in Imladris but sleep, eat and rest, for even for one of Aragorn's stamina and endurance the road from Bree had not been an easy one. He had seen Arwen of course, and just the sight of her had healed something in his own soul. Aragorn had aided Elrond’s work too, when he could, for it seemed some shadow lay yet upon Frodo, and Gandalf feared a splinter of Morgûl steel was still buried within the hobbit’s shoulder. Aragorn could not deny that it was a possibility - the blade had shrivelled to dust before he had been able to examine it. But their patient was so weak they had feared to be too aggressive in their treatment, and so Frodo had been left to rest and recover his strength undisturbed amidst the healing air of Imladris, scented with clean waters and medicinal herbs. In a few hours, when Elrond deemed the hobbit strong enough he would send word for Aragorn and they would begin their search for the deadly splinter again.

For now, Aragorn was engaged in another mission, for he had not yet had chance to speak with Gandalf, although the wizard had arrived in Imladris some days before he and the hobbits. The road had proved far more perilous than either of them had ever feared, and there was much he would discuss with his old friend.

Tracking the wizard down proved more difficult than Aragorn had imagined. The valley seemed remarkably busy this morn; during just the short walk from Arwen’s chambers near the rushing falls to the main house, Aragorn saw Elves of many kinds, groups of men and even a few Dwarves. The house was filling up and something, it seemed, was afoot. Gandalf was even more elusive amongst the hustle and bustle, but nothing could evade a Ranger on the hunt, and from the dining hall Aragorn was pointed in the direction of one of the many gardens, and it was there, under a curving archway beside a fountain he tracked down his quarry.

As Aragorn approached, stepping through the fallen leaves scattered across the jewel-green grass, he saw Gandalf was not alone. He seemed to be engaged in discussion with a strange figure clad in grey and brown, and Aragorn slowed his pace so as not to intrude on their conversation. Well, perhaps not a conversation so much as a hissed argument which, Aragorn noted, was not being conducted in Sindarin, Westron, nor any other tongue known to him.

The hooded stranger noticed Aragorn first as the man came slowly down the steps and stopped speaking abruptly, turning away. The wizard looked around and his expression lightened.

'Aragorn!' Gandalf exclaimed, and came around the fountain to greet him, abandoning the stranger by the trees. 'I am most pleased to see you hale.'

'It is nothing but providence that kept us so, I am sure,' Aragorn said, clasping the Wizard's arm in a grateful embrace. 'Is there news of Frodo today?'

'Nothing yet,' Gandalf said, his face clouded over. 'I will admit that I am dreadfully anxious. Elrond stays at his side for now; I had a few other matters that needed my attention.'

'If Frodo can be saved, I believe Lord Elrond shall prevail,' Aragorn said. 'And he is a most extraordinary hobbit - for all your words when last we met you did not quite prepare me for that. But until near the end of the journey I will say that I was most concerned for you. Until we found your sign at Weathertop I thought that you were taken or worse; we needed you and I have never known you to break your word before.'

'And I intend never to do so again,' Gandalf said. 'And I am sorry for my delay though perhaps it will prove for the best. But come, we have much to discuss, and I would do so before Elrond calls the council he proposes, for then many things shall be brought to light.'

'There are a great number of travellers here. I have not seen the house so full for many years,' Aragorn agreed, glancing over at the stranger who had remained still and silent over by the treeline, half turned away. He was an odd figure, dressed in travel-worn layers of grey and faded brown that were much repaired and fitted him poorly, and bore no devices or decoration that Aragorn could see. The mud splashed over the wrapped leather of his makeshift boots was dry, suggesting he had arrived from the wilds some time ago, and yet he still bore a traveler's pack on his shoulders, and wore a ragged coat, scarf and a hood that between them served to cast his face completely into shadow. There was also a long, broad knife hanging from the stranger’s belt, heavy and not of Elvish make. That too was curious, for few bore weapons within Elrond's halls. All together the garb suggested a woodsman or a Ranger down on his luck, which made it even odder when a breath of wind shifted the stranger's hood a little and Aragorn caught a sudden glimpse of a sharp cheekbone, a beardless chin, and a flutter of pale hair. He realised that he was looking not at a man at all but at an Elf.

If the Elf in question noticed Aragorn’s curious glances he chose to ignore them, for he said nothing nor made any attempt to introduce himself.

'Yes, many have gathered here as though some great summons called them forth,' Gandalf agreed, who also seemed unaware of Aragorn’s curiosity about his companion. 'And though it seems otherwise I think we shall find that we all come to serve the same purpose. Every one of us will have our parts to play in the days that are to come, and dark days they may well be. But come, let us go within, Aragorn. I would hear your tale in full.'

The wizard walked up towards the steps, leaving his former conversant standing alone.

'I did not wish to interrupt your conversation,' Aragorn said, gesturing towards the unknown Elf. 'We can speak later, Gandalf.'

'Nay,' Gandalf said. 'We were quite finished.' There was a slight movement behind the wizard and Aragorn saw the Elf clench a hand tight as if in silent frustration, although if he disagreed that the argument was concluded he did not say so. The silence lasted another moment or two, before at last Gandalf gave in and said, irritably, 'Very well, for all the good it will do. Aragorn son of Arathorn of the Dúnedain - meet Lith.'

Aragorn gave a respectful Elvish half-bow. 'Well met,' he said. The Elf returned the bow but still said nothing. Gandalf seemed to deem the matter concluded and continued up the stairs by Aragorn and then onwards, striding off across the terrace towards the library. Aragorn glanced back towards the fountain, but the strange Elf, the one Gandalf had named only as Lith, was already gone. There was not even a rustle amongst the trees.

Once they had found a secluded spot in the library to occupy, Aragorn and Gandalf talked long, and both found the tale of the other to be of much interest. The treachery of Saruman was grievous for Aragorn to hear, for every ally was vital and to lose one with such power and influence, let alone one who controlled the strategic access through the Gap of Rohan, was a sore blow. Gandalf, in turn, pressed Aragorn for every detail he could recall of the Nazgûl on their journey, and they pondered long on the designs of the enemy. Aragorn asked about the council Gandalf had mentioned, and learned it had been planned for three days hence. Many of the travellers who had sought out the Hidden Valley had tidings, good or ill, and their news could affect all. But more importantly, representatives of the free peoples were present in Rivendell now in numbers that had not been gathered in one place for an Age. Not just the hobbits, but Dwarves from Erebor and Ered Luin, men from Gondor and the north, and Elves from Imladris, Mithlond and the Golden Wood. The previous night, a party of Wood-elves had even arrived across the mountains from the kingdom in Northern Mirkwood, bearing some tidings from their king. The ring was no longer just a concern for the Wise, and it was time for all the people of Middle-earth to determine how doom was to be met.

When it was nearly noon a messenger arrived at the library bearing the expected summons from Elrond requesting both of them to the healing halls. Frodo was strong enough for Elrond to make another attempt to extract the Morgûl splinter and he wished for their assistance. They both stood and began their return to the infirmary together, and it was only when they were passing by the garden with the fountain again, now empty, that Aragorn thought to ask about the odd Elf.

'Your companion seemed a strange sort,' Aragorn said. 'Though perhaps I say it as shouldn’t.'

'What's that?' The wizard had seemed lost in his own thoughts and looked up.

'Lith,' Aragorn said. 'Your introduction told me nothing of him but a name. What of his father-line? From where does he hail? He was clothed almost like a Ranger and hardly in Elf fashion at all.'

'He is...a wanderer,' Gandalf said, which told Aragorn enough to know he would not be getting any clear answers from the wizard this day. 'I have not seen him for many years, and certainly did not think to encounter him as I escaped from Isengard; that was a chance meeting indeed. But he agreed to travel with me on hearing of my desperate haste, and has been of great assistance to me these last weeks searching for you in the wilds.'

Aragorn thought he noted slight censure in the wizard’s tone, as if he disapproved of Aragorn’s questions. Despite it, Aragorn could not help but add:

'I have never known an Elf to bear arms in Imladris before. Does he think himself to be in danger here?'

Gandalf sighed. 'You may think him over cautious, and maybe he is, but he has been given good cause to be in the past. But I would not think too much on Lith. I doubt you will see him about, for he keeps to himself and does not love other folk. As much as I would have it otherwise, I expect he shall soon be gone from here back to his solitude.'

And on the subject, the wizard would say no more. Gandalf was, however, quite correct about Lith’s reticence. Two more days passed and Aragorn did not see the Elf at all. In fact he all but forgot the small mystery in the face of his other concerns, for Frodo’s life still hung by a thread. The other hobbits, while initially distracted by the wonder of Rivendell and their joy at finding Bilbo there, had lapsed back into their fears for their kinsman, and could hardly be persuaded to leave Frodo’s side. But finally, on the night of the 23rd, Elrond found what they had been seeking for days; the sliver of Morgûl steel that had broken off in Frodo’s shoulder and lay close to his heart. The piece was removed and melted, and by the combined efforts of Elrond, Gandalf and Aragorn, the dark sorcery was broken and Frodo’s spirit called back. Within hours the wound closed and began to heal, and they were able to bring the good tidings to the hobbits that Frodo would likely awake the next morning. It was a great relief to all who had come to love the hobbits, and those who had cared for him throughout those long days and nights went to their late rest with light hearts at last.

Frodo did indeed wake the next morning and seemed quite miraculously recovered, enough that he could rise and walk around the house, and even attend a great feast that night which was prepared in his honour. Aragorn did not have a chance to see him at the feast, for that evening also bought the return of Elrond’s sons, Elladan and Elrohir, who had scouted the lands along the Bruinen south and west for many miles. Their tidings were troubling but not unexpected; the bodies of three horses they had found drowned within the flood, but no others had they seen and no sign could be scouted of the wraiths. It was unclear what had become of them.

Aragorn had entirely forgotten Gandalf’s strange friend Lith by the morning of Elrond's great council. Aragorn had arrived early at the open porch with Elladan and Elrohir to see the open space set about with a circle of many chairs. Gloin and several other Dwarves were already present as were many Elves, some Aragorn recognised and some he did not. Boromir of Gondor was also present, seated close to the door and he looked even less at ease than the Dwarves. Aragorn went to speak with him, hoping to put the man’s mind at rest while they waited for Elrond and all others who had been invited to arrive and for the Council to commence. Boromir seemed relieved to see other men would be present, and gladly he answered Aragorn’s polite queries about the wellbeing of his father, the Steward. They had only been speaking a few minutes when Aragorn's attention was suddenly drawn by voices to his left. They were not raised, but the quiet words were being exchanged were tight with anger and tension. Glorfindel stood in the doorway for the porch, solid and resolute, and before him were two Elves whose green and brown raiment marked them as envoys of Mirkwood. The one closest to Glorfindel was leaning forward, angrily, and Aragorn heard him hiss:

'It is an insult and will not be borne.'

'No insult is intended, and you shall bear it,' Glorfindel answered, sternly, though his voice was still low. 'He is here at the invitation of Elrond, just as you all are, and guests of this house will treat each other with courtesy.'

'Only when such courtesy is warranted. He is _Penenith! Ú-dihenan!_ If our king were to hear of this outrage--'

'Thranduil is not lord here,' Glorfindel said, so soft Aragorn almost did not hear. 'And none but you and those of his household are beholden to his commands. While you remain within the borders of Lord Elrond’s land you will act in accordance with his will, Luinmeord, and it is Elrond’s will that peace and courtesy extend to all that are guests within these walls. Now I bid you both take your seats. There are more important matters here for us to attend to.'

'There are,' snapped Luinmeord. 'And with your foolishness, lord, I fear you and Elrond endanger us all.'

The Wood-elf, Luinmeord, turned on his heel and walked away, his companion beside him. Their backs were stiff and straight with anger and they went straight across the porch to the other three Wood-elves in their party and they began to whisper together.

Glorfindel continued onto the porch at a more stately pace and took a seat near Elrond's chair. Aragorn was not entirely surprised when, a few moments later, the figure of Lith slipped in after him through the doorway, no doubt the subject of the argument at the door. The hodded Elf's shabby travelling garb looked even more out of place now amongst the glittering maille of the Dwarves and the velvet and silk majesty of the Elves’ robes, though at least this time he did not seemed to be armed and had left his travelling pack behind. Still, Aragorn could not help but wonder why Lith was here; that he was a friend of Gandalf’s must have some relevance, but he was no Elf-lord nor figure of any standing amongst the Wise or he would have been known to Aragorn. And his presence at this council was certainly a point of tension; Aragorn had scarcely ever seen such enmity between Elves, nor heard any speak so to Glorfindel before. Luinmeord had called Lith nameless and unforgiven like his very presence was a curse. After the commotion at the entrance, which thankfully few others of the guests seem to have noticed, Lith was clearly trying to draw as little attention as possible and edged around the porch taking a seat in an unobtrusive corner. He seemed not to see the dark glances the Mirkwood Elves threw in his direction.

After a few more minutes Elrond arrived with Erestor, and then Gandalf came last with Frodo, Bilbo and Sam in tow. Aragorn was surprised again to see that the old hobbit Bilbo not only noticed Lith in his corner but even gave him a grin and a wave of greeting. The Elf returned the gesture with a flutter of thin fingers but if he smiled back Aragorn did not see it.

Then there was no more time for distractions for then Elrond's great council began. It was a long debate and many strange and unsettling events were brought to light. Glóin told of emissaries from Mordor offering rings in friendship, Boromir of war and sieges and prophetic dreams, the sons of Elrond of the mustering of orcs and other beasts in the mountains. In all lands it seemed darkness was gathering. Then the debate turned to the history of the ring, of the Last Alliance and Isildur’s Bane, and thence to Isildur’s heir, and Aragorn was revealed to the company, and to Boromir, as the very same. Bilbo told of how the ring had come to him and at last the conversation turned to Gollum. Aragorn gave his own account of the hunt for the creature and the long months he had endured his vile company. But Gollum was safe from other mischief now in the custody of the Elves of Mirkwood, or so Aragorn had thought until Thranduil’s messenger spoke.

'Now the tidings we bear must be told,' said Luinmeord the Wood-elf. 'Our lord sent us to report that the creature Gollum escaped.'

'Escaped?' Aragorn cried. 'That is ill news indeed. We shall all rue it bitterly, I fear. How came the folk of Thranduil to fail in their trust?'

'If failure it was, it was not through fault of ours,' snapped Luinmeord. 'For the prisoner had aid from outside and we deem there was some treachery afoot.'

At that, the Mirkwood Elves turned as one and stared at Lith. At some point Lith had let his hood fall back and now for the first time his face was visible. He had the fair features of all his race with a countenance that was pale and narrow, with delicate bone structure and soft grey eyes under dark brows. But more immediately apparent than anything else was the vivid scar the Elf bore below his right eye, like two intersecting slashes across the cheekbone. Not even his flaxen hair, which fell wild and unbraided across his face and shoulders, could quite conceal the damage. Lith said nothing in response to the stares of the Wood-elves, and he merely continued to look silently towards Elrond. His back was very straight.

The Mirkwood Elves perhaps realised they would not provoke Lith with their glares for in time Luinmeord continued, describing how Gollum had hidden from his guards in a nearby tree before the Elves were set upon by orcs. When they had defeated the ambush they found the creature had escaped into the forest. It was sore news for Aragorn, who had risked and endured much to capture Gollum, but there was no point now in more recrimination.

Gandalf then told of Saruman’s betrayal, the tale he had relayed to Aragorn days ago but now told the council in full. He described the rescue by Gwaihir, his dismissal by Théoden of the Mark, and of the taming of the Mearas on the plains of Rohan.

'Shadowfax they called him,' Gandalf said. 'By day his coat glistens like silver; and by night it is like a shade, and he passes unseen. Light is his footfall! Never before had any man mounted him, but I took him and I tamed him, and so speedily he bore me that I reached the Shire when Frodo was on the Barrow-downs. But I get ahead of myself, for a day after I crossed the ford of Isen with Shadowfax, I first encountered my old friend, Lith, wandering on the Old South Road.'

Gandalf gestured towards Lith and all eyes turned to the Elf. Lith again said nothing, but now his gaze was turned down at his own hands.

'I was surprised to see him for I thought he had forsaken these lands for Rhûn long ago. ‘I cannot tarry,’ I said to him. ‘For great need lies upon me and I have a desperate errand to fulfil. But if you ever held our friendship dear I would beg you to ride with me now, for I may encounter much peril on the road and the enemy moves against me at every turn. I would welcome your bow and your keen eyes’. To my relief he agreed, and Shadowfax bore us both northwards.'

'A strange choice of travel companion, Mithrandir,' put in Erestor. He also was looking at Lith, and Aragorn was surprised to see distaste on his face too. Indeed, of all the Elves, only Elrond and Glorfindel did not look at Lith like he was something unclean.

At last Lith himself spoke up. His voice was very quiet and his Westron touched with a lilt that sounded distinctly silvan. Indeed, with his colouring, features and manner of speech he could almost have been kin to Luinmeord, for all that the Mirkwood Elves seemed so clearly to despise him. 'The Enedwaith is not as safe as once it was,' Lith said. 'I know the lands there well. Mithrandir asked for my aid.'

'And it was well he gave it,' Gandalf said, with a touch of sterness towards Erestor. 'For we encountered wolves several times on our journey and were even beset by a band of goblins outside the ruins of Tharbad. But at last we reached Sarn Ford and the Rangers there loaned us a second horse, and we reached Hobbiton by the afternoon of the 29th when Aragorn and the hobbits were travelling from Bree.'

Gandalf went on to tell the rest of the tale, how the wizard and Lith had followed the hobbits’ trail from Bag End to Crickhollow and then on to Bree, and how they had inadvertently overtaken them on the road while Aragorn had taken the hobbits through the wilderness of Midgewater. Then the Gandalf told the part of the tale Aragorn did not know: how the wizard and Lith had arrived at Weathertop on the night of the third of October and had been besieged there by the Ringwraiths, and that though he had tried to send Lith away to safety before the trap closed, the Elf had refused to go, staying by Gandalf’s side and holding the wraiths back with flaming bolts until his quiver was empty and at last the dawn came.

'Forgive me, Mithrandir,' said Luinmeord, suddenly standing up. Aragorn had seen the Wood-elf growing more and more angry during Gandalf’s tale until at last his voice had burst from him. 'Forgive me. We have held our tongues as Lord Glorfindel bid us, in respect of this house. But I do not see why we must be subject to this...lurid detail. Please just tell of the pertinent matters and let us move on.'

Gandalf raised his bushy eyebrows at Luinmeord’s outburst. 'Perhaps I have let my retelling go overlong, Luinmeord, but I promise you these events are of relevance. The Nazgûl are a terrible foe and until you face them yourselves you cannot understand it.'

'We do not question that,' said a second Wood-elf, who also stood. Aragorn thought Elrond had given her name as Almscella, a captain of the Mirkwood Guard. 'And we have nothing but respect for your great deeds, Mithrandir. But it is insult enough that the Penenith must be present here. That you must seek to glorify him is beyond tolerance.' The faces of the Elves were cold and hard, though the Dwarves seemed confused and Frodo utterly bewildered. Bilbo was shaking his head.

'Mithrandir merely seeks to tell the events as they happened.' Elrond spoke up, voice slow and measured. 'I beg you all not to seek insult where none exists. All who oppose the will of Sauron are allies in this war, and we must unite or we will fall.'

'Men, we will gladly treat with,' said Luinmeord. 'Even Dwarves. But not with that.' The Elf pointed at Lith. 'His presence here offends us and endangers the secrecy of this very council. _Ú-sador!'_ he spat again, and Aragorn had seldom heard such venom. The other elves around him began to hiss their own curses at Lith.

_'Ristagwaedh!'_

_'Bodadêldir!'_

Lith rose so suddenly to his feet that Aragorn stood too, thinking the Elf might respond to the insults with harsh words of his own, or even with blows, and that someone would have to intervene. But Lith merely turned in silence, walked swiftly across the porch to the doorway, and fled the council without a backward glance.

There was stunned silence. Elrond shook his head, sadly, but said nothing. No-one went after Lith. The Wood-elves sat down once more with an air of satisfaction and wounded pride. Aragorn was quite appalled by their behaviour.

'That was uncalled for,' he said to Luinmeord.

'Peace,' said Elrond, and but it was Aragorn himself that Elrond directed the remark to, and not the unruly Wood-elves.

The hobbits were looking uncomfortable and scandalised, although the Dwarves from Erebor had watched the unfolding drama with a kind of horrified fascination.

'So much for legendary courtesy of the Elves,' muttered Gimli, Glóin’s son, a little too loudly.

His father was frowning after Lith’s departing figure, looking oddly thoughtful. 'What was all that about, if I might ask?' Glóin said to Elrond.

Elrond merely waved a hand. 'Old history that I hoped to avoid, Master Glóin. I apologise for the disruption.'

'He is gone now,' said Erestor. 'And it is for the best. The secrets we debate are not for the ears of all, least of all his kind. He had no place here.'

Elrond did not disagree with the statement, even though to Aragorn’s disbelieving ears it sounded like the Master of Imladris was being criticised. 'While we fight amongst ourselves the enemy laughs at our folly,' Elrond said, briskly moving on. 'We must put aside our differences and focus on the task in hand. Mithrandir, if perhaps you could continue?'

'I will be brief,' Gandalf said, and Aragorn thought he looked not angry, as he had expected, but perhaps just rather sad. But even Gandalf, who had clearly advocated Lith’s presence here and had done much to speak of his skills and courage, had not defended him as the other Elves had driven him off. Maybe there was more to these events than Aragorn previously supposed.

But now they reached the crux of the debate - what to do with the ring? - and there was no time more to dwell on the strangeness of one Elf. The fate of Middle-earth was in peril, and it was now the time for them to turn their thoughts to the future. What would they do with the enemy’s great prize now it lay so unexpectedly in their grasp?

It was afternoon before the council came to a close. Frodo would take the ring to the fires of Mount Doom, and with him would go Sam. Aragorn was all but certain that Gandalf would go with them, as probably would he, for they would follow to road to Gondor for many leagues and thither was Aragorn bound. But nothing further was yet decided about the number or type of companions that should accompany the ring on its journey south. And they need not leave for some weeks yet, for first they must learn all they could about the movements of the enemy in the lands around.

There was much to do this day. There were routes to plan and supplies to gather, and messages to be sent out. There was little freedom for personal errands, but Aragorn made time to speak with the hobbits and to snatch a precious few hours with the Lady Arwen before he was summoned to see Elrond once more. The Elf-lord wished to discuss the movement of the Elven scouts who would head out east and north. Aragorn himself intended to leave in the morning alongside Elladan and Elrohir, and travel west to meet with the Rangers. The brethren would turn south, to Lothlorien, while Aragorn and the Rangers would follow the Bruinen to seek any further sign of the Nazgûl. Elrond approved of the strategy.

When at last all the business was concluded, Aragorn spoke up. ‘Elrond, there is something I wish to know.’

Elrond sighed. 'You have questions about what happened during the Council.'

'Aye,' Aragorn agreed. 'I have never seen Elves act thusly before. They could not have looked more disgusted if Gandalf had brought an orc with him to the Council. I found it most disquieting. How could Lith have earned such ire?'

'It is an uncommon situation, and a sad one, and it is not my tale to tell,' Elrond said. 'But I do not think you will see him again. He has already left the Valley. The Wood-elves insisted.'

Aragorn blinked in surprise. 'Lith has gone? The Wood-elves truly have so much authority?'

'Luinmeord is the child of Caranalder, King Thranduil’s last surviving son, and thus he has much standing,' Elrond said.

'Still, you have never bowed to the whims of Thranduil before,' Aragorn said, dismayed at the very thought. 'This is the Last Homely House, is it not? Why does Lith receive such derision and scorn? Even Erestor and Galdor seemed to despise him while Gandalf clearly holds him in regard, and by his reckoning Lith’s deeds at Weathertop were nothing but praiseworthy.'

'It would have been far better if Mithrandir had never brought him here,' Elrond said, shortly. 'Let alone inviting him to the Council. I do not know what he intended to achieve by doing so. That wizard can be the worst meddler when he sets his mind to it. I do not think that the Elf poses a danger but his unnecessary presence disrupted the debate, alienated our allies and almost set all our plans to naught.'

Elrond stood and walked to the window. Aragorn waited in silence, knowing his foster father had more to say. And at last Elrond sighed. 'He is a _Bodadêldir_ , Aragorn. It is a punishment not practiced amongst the Ñoldor for more than an Age.'

'One who is...unwelcome?' Aragorn translated. He was not conversant in the Silvan tongues, but much of the vocabulary was similar enough to Sindarin to be understandable.

'Say more a ‘hated exile’,' Elrond said. 'An Elf stripped of his name and his identity and turned out into the wild. He is as one dead to those who knew him, and he is forbidden to enter any Elven settlement, homestand or lands henceforth, or to seek aid or companionship from any Elf he may meet in other lands. Worse than all, no Elven ship may ever be permitted to bear him hence from these shores.'

Aragorn stared almost in disbelief. Such a punishment. To be cast out, shunned by his own kind for all time and even forbidden from leaving the confines of Middle-earth for Valinor, damned to an undying eternity of isolation. The concept was almost unthinkable.

Aragorn thought back to the quiet figure he had seen at the Council who had only stared at his hands in silence as insults were thrown at him so viciously. 'What could he have done that possibly warrants such extreme exile?'

'Of that, I am not permitted to speak,' Elrond said, but Aragorn's mind was already turning.

'They called him Faithless,' Aragorn said. 'Oathbreaker.'

Elrond just watched, silently, and then finally it dawned on Aragorn, the one crime that was unforgivable among the Eldar beyond all others.

'He is a Kinslayer.'

Elrond sighed. 'Yes. Or he attempted the act, at least.'

Lith had killed another Elf. He had taken the life of another of the Eldar.

'And you let him stay here in Rivendell?'

Elrond gave a laugh though there was no humour in it. 'Have a care, Aragorn; you are in danger of seeming hypocritical. Yes, I let him enter our borders with Gandalf and I permitted him stay, for a while. I sensed no evil in him, and as you so eloquently reminded me, I am not beholden to Silvan law, though by tradition and treaty all of the Eldar shun the Bodadêldir and they are exiles from all Elven lands. But I knew something of the Elf he was before he was cast out and I mourn for him, for he was no murderer. I know not the events which caused his exile. None do. But I fear in my heart that something terrible happened, perhaps even the cruelest of injustices. But there is no turning back, however I wish it, and to let him stay here longer would incite a terrible retribution when we need most our combined strength. I cannot risk the future of this world for one Elf. He is gone now, for better or worse. Now, you must go too, and prepare, Aragorn, for tomorrow your journeys begin anew.'


	2. 26th October 3019

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aragorn goes into the Wild, and encounters the strange Elf again.

### 26th October 3018

And so it was that the scouts departed, heading out into the lands around Rivendell north, south, east and west, seeking what news they could gather, while back in the Last Homely House the hobbits rested and recovered, and the Wise planned and debated. 

Aragorn left Imladris the morning following the Council with the sons of Elrond. The October day was damp and cool, and low mists clung to the hillsides and lay as a blanket over the waters of the Bruinen. They climbed up out of the valley into the golden sunlight of the early morn and sped away following the river as it thundered its way south-west, where in due course it would meet the Mitheithel and the Gwathló and after some six-hundred miles the rush of water that began in the mountains would slowly empty out into the sea. Aragorn kept his eyes open for any sign of Lith as they travelled, wondering if the Elf had lingered somewhere nearby, but no trace of the exile did he see and it was likely he was far away by now.

The three sons of Elrond travelled together for seven days, tracking the debris from the path of the Bruinen’s great flood away from the mountains. The Hunter's Moon waxed and then waned and they found no sign of living enemies, but made a total count of five more drowned horses and Elladan even found a slashed and tattered black cloak. This they burned, and they dragged the dead horses from the river lest their decay poison the clear waters downstream with their filth. Of the last ninth horse there was no sign, but for now they had hope that the enemy had been entirely scattered and unhorsed. Should Gandalf have been there no doubt he would have tempered their relief with dire predictions that the Nazgûl were free now to rise again in a form more swift and terrible. But for the present at least they seem to have fled from the North.

The brethren passed one night in Tadoliant before their ways parted. The small mannish settlement within its great timber fence sat high on the banks above the confluence of the Hoarwell and the Loudwater. Rangers passed this way often, and though the village had no inn, there were folk who would house a weary traveller for a few coin. They stayed the night with a family who were known to the Rangers; a potter, her husband and two small children, a boy and a girl, who stared at their strange guests with wide eyes. 

The following morning Elladan and Elrohir set out east. Their road would take them into the passes above Caradhras and then along the Celebrant down the Dimrill Dale into the hidden land of Lórien. Aragorn himself continued west through the vast fenlands of the Nîn-in-Eilph and down at last to the ruins of the river port of Tharbad. There he met with the Rangers who were guarding the ford, and they were much pleased to see their Chieftain again. They reported no sign of the Nine passing south or east, nor of Gollum, but they gave other tidings which were less glad; they had driven out the goblins occupying the ruins, but orcs had been raiding down along the Glanduin in greater numbers, and wolf packs had been growing bolder, leaving their forests and harrying the villages even as far as the South Downs. The watch on the Shire had been doubled.

The days rolled into weeks, and autumn was passing into a crisp and cool winter before Aragorn set his sights back on Imladris and began his return to the north. The nights were cold and still beneath cloudless skies, and the mornings that followed were bright and the ground thick with frost. But the cold snap did not hold, and by the morning of the 15th November, Aragorn woke to see rain clouds squatting low above the distant mountains. He was still within the wetlands of the Nîn-in-Eilph when the weather turned and the rains began in earnest, and never was travel quite so wearisome as under constant rain that soaked all his belongings and meant not a single leaf would catch for firewood.

And it was then, after another three days of endless rain, that he encountered Lith again. 

It was nearly evening and he was still two days away from Tadoliant. Cold, damp and weariness had conspired to steal Aragorn’s attention from his surroundings, and he almost paid for his inattention with his life. The arrow pierced through the hide of his coat pinning his sword arm to the bark of a willow before he was even aware that he was not alone. Aragorn gave a startled breath and moved to tear his arm free but then a shadowy, cloaked figure dropped from the trees above and a knife blade was at his throat, pushing him back against the tree. He froze.

'Why do you follow me?' The voice spoke the Common Tongue, but the accent was noticeably Silvan. 

'I do not follow you,' Aragorn said, carefully, holding very still. 'I am merely travelling.'

'I saw you pass by two weeks ago, searching for something. Now you return.'

'I am scouting for signs of orcs and wolves. You are not my concern.'

Lith moved slightly, and Aragorn could see the Elf’s stormy grey eyes studying him, coldly.

'Why should I believe you?' The Elf hissed.

'I am a friend of Gandalf the Grey.'

'I know. That is why you are not already dead.'

'Likewise,' said Aragorn, and he moved his left hand slightly, letting the Elf feel the point of the sharp hunting knife Aragorn had pressed up to his ribs. The Elf may have taken him by surprise, but Aragorn would have been dead long since had he not developed reactions faster than a striking snake.

The Elf said nothing. For a long moment he did not react and they stayed trapped in the stalemate. Then Lith slowly lifted his own blade away from Aragorn’s neck and stepped back. The man let him move away, lowering his hunting knife to his side, though he did not sheathe it.

'What are you doing here?' Lith said. He looked as rain soaked as Aragorn, his face ghost-white in the gloom. 

'Scouting,' Aragorn replied. 'Lord Elrond wishes for news of the lands around Imladris.'

'They sent you to kill me,' Lith said, flatly. 'I heard too much at that Council, and now they must ensure I cannot tell another.'

Aragorn shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'I did not even know you were here.'

'Where are the other two?' Lith said. His posture was tense, ready at any moment to attack. 'The Elrondionnath.'

'They had business elsewhere,' said Aragorn. 'They are no doubt many leagues from here by now.'

Lith said nothing in response to that but watched Aragorn in an intense silence. Aragorn shifted slightly and noticed pain in his right arm; the Elf’s arrow that pinned his coat had struck him after all. Still, the Elf could have shot him through the heart and as he had not, Aragorn was fairly confident that, for all his reputation as a murderer implied, Lith did not actually wish him dead.

'If we’re not going to kill each other, might I take care of this?' Aragorn said, pointing to his arm. 'It’s bleeding.'

The Elf still said nothing, so Aragorn took his silence for assent, sheathed his knife and turned to examine his arm. He was surprised to see not an arrow but a thick bolt such as those fired from an orkish crossbow, and where it pinned him to the tree the shaft had cut a deep gouge through the skin and outer muscle of his arm. 

Aragorn carefully loosened the bolt from the tree, stepping away. He investigated the wound as well as he could with his fingers. Lith watched, his face dispassionate. Though the Elf’s knife had disappeared, Aragorn saw he had reclaimed the crossbow from somewhere and was holding it ready in his hand. It was certainly not of orkish make. 

'That is an uncommon weapon,' Aragorn said but Lith didn’t answer. So much for the distraction of conversation. 

Aragorn felt around his arm to the point of the bolt still embedded in it, and realised it did not have a head of tapered iron or steel but that the wooden shaft itself had just been carved to a point and fire hardened. That made removing it a much simpler proposition. Keeping Lith in his peripheral vision as much as possible, Aragorn sat and then slowly drew the bolt back out of the flesh the way it had entered. Hot blood welled up as the bolt came free and he tossed it aside, cursing quietly. The flow of fresh blood flow would aid in cleaning out the wound. 

'Is it serious?' said Lith, after a long time. 

'No,' Aragorn said. 'At least it won’t be if I can keep it from festering.'

'How do you do that?'

Aragorn looked up, feeling sure the Elf must be jesting or mocking him, but he seemed nothing but genuine and slightly curious. Elves as a rule concerned themselves little with fears of infection, being highly resistant to most bodily ills, though most who had any dealings with mortals were familiar with the concept. 

'It needs to be cleaned and kept dry,' Aragorn said. ‘Fortunately, I have some skill as a healer. I need fire and hot water. Dry bandages if I could get them as my gear is sodden through, but I see no chance of that this side of Tadoliant.'

Lith just stared at him with the same faintly questioning expression. 

'That is the settlement two days up the river from here,' Aragorn clarified. The Elf nodded. After another long moment he said:

'I can light a fire.'

'Good for you,' Aragorn said, the pain in his arm making him more waspish than was his habit. The Elf didn’t look as if he had noticed.

'There is a better campsite beyond that ridge,' The Elf volunteered again, and waited. 

Aragorn sat back, looking carefully at this strange Elf. 'First you shoot me, then accuse me of trying to assassinate you, and now you invite me to your camp?'

'Yes,' said the Elf, who was either immune to Aragorn’s tone of voice or perhaps so out of practice with conversation that he did not notice it. Aragorn considered the probable insanity of this course of action for a moment, but really there was no choice. At least he could keep an eye on Lith if he stayed close. If they parted now he would have no idea where in all the night the Elf was, and that might be worse.

'Very well,' he said. The Elf watched him get to his feet and then he went to retrieve the crossbow bolt Aragorn had thrown aside. Lith wiped it on a cloth and then returned it to his quiver. Aragorn raised an eyebrow but said nothing. 

With some misgivings, Aragorn followed Lith as he led the way on through the gathering dark. They did not walk far, perhaps a mile, but it was long enough for Aragorn’s doubts to turn and fester in his mind. This Elf was an exile and a criminal so dangerous he had been forbidden from keeping Elvish company until he died or the world ended. That Gandalf trusted him counted for much, but the wizard had been deceived before, as the business with Saruman proved. The Elf had been encountered near Isengard, and then later had been privy to much at Elrond’s Council which had been kept secret from those of higher regard. Was he in league with their enemy, a spy perhaps, or enacting some kind of trap? But as much as his wary thoughts suggested it, Aragorn found he could not somehow bring himself to believe Lith was an enemy agent. For one thing, sending a known and recognised outcast to infiltrate would be most unwise. For another, thought the blood drying on his coat might attest otherwise, Lith still did not seem like an enemy. Aragorn considered his own ability to judge the character of others to be quite sound. Never before had it failed him. Whether a gift of his Númenorian bloodline, a learned Elvish trait or indeed just blind luck, he had always an instinct for deceit and for sensing the influence of the Dark Lord on others. He sensed nothing now.

Lith finally turned aside from their path and slipped beneath a low stand of trees. Beyond was a hollow dell, half sheltered from the rain by a rocky outcrop. Lith pushed an arm into a narrow crack in the rocks and returned with a bundle of dry firewood which had been hidden there. This place was clearly known him. Lith set about making a fire and at last put down the crossbow, though he kept a bolt to the string and kept the weapon close at his side. It seemed he was as uncertain of Aragorn as Aragorn was of him. 

Finding fresh water was not difficult in this land and by the time Aragorn returned, the campfire was kindled in a hollow where the light was concealed from all but one side by the edges of the dell. The trees were not growing densely enough to keep out the unceasing rain entirely, but the fall was lessened somewhat by their branches above, and they also blocked some of the wind. Lith had been right; it was a good campsite. 

The Elf watched in silence as Aragorn heated the water in his small cooking pot and turned to treating the wound on his arm. It was indeed fairly shallow, no deeper than a finger’s width, though it was long and bleed freely. Aragorn repaired the gash as well as he could considering he was stitching by firelight and using his left hand. Lith made no offer of help and Aragorn asked for none. At the moment he was grateful enough that the Elf had ceased holding a weapon on him. 

At last the wound was stitched and bandaged, and Aragorn pulled his shirt, jerkin and coat back on, for all the warmth the sodden fabric would provide. 

'I’ll mend,' he said at the Elf’s questioning look, and then gestured to the crossbow. 'Tell me. Was that a good shot aimed to stop me reaching my sword, or a poor shot aimed to kill me?' 

In the firelight he saw Lith’s mouth tighten. Was that guilt? 

'I was not trying to kill you.' Lith said, quietly, fidgeting with the worn glove he worse on his shield arm. 'I was...afraid.'

'It is an interesting weapon, the crossbow.'

'Yes,' agreed the Elf, shortly. 

'I have never seen its like before,' Aragorn said. 

'It...' He paused and then added, 'it is my own design.'

'Come now,' Aragorn pressed. 'After the trouble you have put me through, the least you could do is let me see it. I must say I am curious.' He _was_ curious, but he also wanted to see what the Elf would do when asked to surrender the weapon. Aragorn might be sure that Lith was not a servant of evil, but he was as yet still a very unknown entity and might have dark intentions of his own.

Lith looked for a moment like he might refuse, but then he removed the bolt from the flight groove, released the string, and held the crossbow out. Aragorn took it and studied it with careful interest. It was hand-carved of wood, with metal and rope fittings and a string of Elf-hair; heavy certainly, though compact, and like all of the Elf’s gear and clothes, was much worn and repaired. He had probably made it himself.

'Why do you use this type of bow?' Aragorn asked, handing the crossbow back. 'I can see it is a powerful weapon, but it cannot be as accurate nor fast as a longbow, and those are far simpler to craft.'

The Elf stood up, slinging the crossbow onto his back. 'I go to fetch more water,' he said, shortly, and vanished into the night without another word. Aragorn sighed. 

Lith returned soon after with their waterskins refilled and made no attempts to restart conversation though Aragorn could feel the Elf watching him constantly while he crouched by the fire. 

'Do you carry provisions?' Aragorn said at last, examining his own dwindling supplies. He was a week out from Tharbad and at least ten more days from Rivendell, and his bread was already flecked green with mould. He had enough other food for his own needs but if he must feed the Elf also he would have to hunt.

Lith nodded. 'I have waybread, cheese and dried fruit,' he said, then his eyes flicked away, almost guiltily. 'I usually gather what I need from the wild, but Lord Elrond sent servants with provisions for me before I left Imladris. There is much kindness in his heart.'

'Aye,' Aragorn agreed, thinking that this had been the most words the Elf had yet spoken in one stretch. 'And Gandalf too. You seemed to know him well.' 

'Mithrandir,' Lith said. 'Yes. I am his friend, I think.' With the air of one changing the subject, the Elf asked, 'Where now are you bound?'

'I am returning home to Imladris. And you?' 

Lith did not answer again, and it occurred to Aragorn that the question had been an unintentionally cruel one to put to someone under eternal exile. He himself had wandered the wilds for many decades, fought in numerous wars, found himself lost and far from home. But there had always been a home, however distant and unachievable it had seemed at the time. He always had Rivendell to return to. This Elf had nothing. 

But then he heard a memory of his own voice, saying _they called him Faithless, Oathbreaker,_ and remembered the anger on the fair faces of Luinmeord and Almscella, the Wood-elves. This Elf was a Kinslayer. He had ended another immortal life with his own hand, and for that there was no forgiveness. He could have taken from the world a smile like Elladan’s, a wit like Elrohir’s, a soul like Arwen’s...

 _I was not trying to kill you_ , Lith had said _. I was afraid._

'I know what you are,' Aragorn said, suddenly.

'So do many,' Lith answered, shortly but somehow without bitterness. 'They made sure of that.'

An owl hooted on the darkness of the trees, and they both looked up. Lith turned away to watch the bird’s flight, but Aragorn’s eye was caught instead by the scar that marred the Elf’s face. The mark looked pale, almost silvery in the firelight, and wasformed of two long, rough slashes that intersected in a cross over the right cheek, passing from below the inner crease of his eye down to the earlobe, and from the hairline near his ear tip almost all the way to the corner of his mouth. Aragorn had rarely seen an Elf form any kind of scar tissue before; their naturally superior healing meant wounds closed rapidly and easily, and left barely a mark. A wound that caused an Elf to scar must have been reopened again and again to disrupt the healing. He realised, with a pulse of horror, that the disfigurement must have been intentional. 

The Elf noticed the focus of Aragorn’s attention and he quickly turned away, pulling up his hood to cast his face into shadow. 

The realisation that Lith had been deliberately defaced was an unpleasant one, but there was still so much that Aragorn did not yet know. In that moment, for all his well-honed caution and long years of patient endurance, this mystery and the deep well of Lith’s secrets was most vexing. It seemed probable given his accent and Elrond’s comments that Lith had once been counted amongst the Wood-elves, but Aragorn might never know anything more of who this Elf had been before he was declared nameless. What awful circumstances had led him to the murder of another Elf, a crime that had seen him cast so utterly into the darkness with no hope for redemption? Who had been the victim of his crime, and what grieving family had they left behind? But Aragorn did not find the courage to ask any of these questions. For one thing he was afraid Lith would not answer. For another, he was afraid that he would.

'Why were you at the Council?' Aragorn asked, instead.

'Mithrandir asked it of me.'

'Why?'

'I do not fully know. He said that I may be asked to recount what I knew. I see and hear many things in the wild, and the birds often give me news. As early as midsummer I saw the Nazgûl riding north through Dunland. Gandalf said my observations may be of interest to the Council, and that in this time of peril old ills would be put aside and that my presence would be tolerated in peace. But he should have known better. _I_ should have known better. I am Faithless. I am Oathbreaker _._ My words cannot be trusted.'

'You did not need to leave Imladris so suddenly,' Aragorn said, marvelling that the Elf had replied at all, let alone so loquaciously. 'Elrond would not have cast you out, whatever the other Elves said.'

'I have learned not to stay where I am unwelcome,' said Lith, quietly. 'I had no desire for further encounters with the Elves of the Greenwood. Besides, it was at peril to himself that Lord Elrond took me into the valley. I would not have him risk more for one already damned.'

Conversation dwindled after that as they turned their thoughts and hands to preparing a simple meal. Lith asked no more questions of Aragorn and his answers to the Ranger’s questions dried up to nothing. He seemed almost exhausted by their interaction. Aragorn couldn’t help but wonder if this was the most the Elf had spoken to another in a long time. It made the mystery of why he had led Aragorn here to this campsite clearer. Yes, there was guilt for Aragorn’s injury for though the Elf had made no apology for it, it had been clear from his concern for Aragorn’s well-being that he regretted causing the harm. But his other motive now was becoming apparent, and it was far less sinister than Aragorn had feared. 

The Elf was lonely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos and comments on the last chapter. I'm really enjoying working on this so its brilliant to hear people are finding it compelling so far.  
> Next chapter out next week!


	3. 19th November 3018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rain continues and as they travel, Lith and Aragorn learn a little more about each other.  
> Lives are put at risk when an unforeseen danger strikes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get a little darker from this point on, my dudes. Heed the tags.

### 19th November 3018

The next morning broke grey and overcast. The rain had stopped during the night, but the first grim light of dawn had barely lightened the low cloud hovering over the distant mountain peaks before another rainfall began anew. Lith had been perched up in a willow, watching the fieldmice scurry through the fallen leaves for some hours before the man, Aragorn, stirred. Lith watched him groan a little as he rolled out from his sodden blankets, rubbing his hands and feet as if they were numb with cold. He moved stiffly like his body ached with old wounds. He did not look old, this Aragorn, as far as an Elf could judge such things—the crown of his dark head was flecked but a little with silver and there was no bend to his back—but he must have seen much hardship in what few years he had lived. Lith had not sought out contact with the Dúnedain before, for they were altogether too Elvish in their customs and thought for his comfort, but even in a land as vast as Middle-earth, wanderers will sometimes meet in the wilds. He had seen and heard enough to know the lives of the Rangers were beset by many perils.

Lith came down from the tree when the man called his name, low and uncertain. Breakfast consisted of cold oats and dried fruit in rainwater, for the fire had gone out hours ago and there seemed little point in lighting it again when the time could be better spent travelling on. Aragorn commented that it was a cheerless meal, but Lith had too often experienced all the same cheerlessness with no meal at all, so he made no complaint. Then Aragorn packed up their small campsite while Lith piled freshly cut logs into the hollow in the rock face. The wood was too damp to be much use now, but over time it would dry. He did not know if he would ever come back here, but any other travellers passing this way might be grateful for it. 

Then Aragorn stood up and pulled on his pack, clearly making ready to depart. Lith kept his distance, standing half turned away. It was habit now to stand thus, keeping the scarred side of face from view, even though the man had made free to stare at it well enough the previous night. Lith’s scars stung in the cold, and his wretched arm ached fiercely. He gripped the glove over his wrist, tightly.

'I must make a start,' Aragorn said, at last, though he did not move and sounded oddly reluctant to bid the Elf farewell. That seemed strange; Lith would be the first to admit that he was hardly good company. He had interacted with few but Mithrandir for so long, and the wizard knew something of his history and was used to his odd ways. But perhaps the man was reluctant to leave behind an object of curiosity, or more likely, morbid fascination. Lith did not know what Elrond or Luinmeord may have told Aragorn about him, after all.

Lith just nodded, wordlessly. 

'Where will you go now?' Aragorn asked. 

'Oh,' said the Elf, vaguely. 'Around. Sometimes, I follow the swifts in the winter.' 

Aragorn just looked at him as if the comment was quite incomprehensible. 'I do not wish to disrupt your plans,' he said, slowly, after it seemed he had finally translated Lith’s statement that he would head south. 'But I must make it back to Imladris before the first snows fall. I have tidings for Lord Elrond, and then a longer journey to make after that cannot be delayed. I could use another pair of eyes on the road to Imladris. No lands are as safe as once they were, and I have experienced your skills with that crossbow already.'

Lith said nothing for a moment. How like Mithrandir this man was! And yet how his spirit ached for friendly words, for companionship. It was like a rope to one drowning, and he could not resist.

'I will not go back into the Hidden Valley,' he said, at last. 

'No,' Aragorn agreed. 'But you might come with me to the edges of that land.'

'You know what I am,' Lith said, slowly. 'And yet you would trust me at your back?'

'You haven’t killed me yet,' Aragorn pointed out, sounding needlessly cheerful. 'Though you have not lacked for opportunity. Two can travel faster and safer than one, and I have no wish to encounter a pack of goblins alone and now with a wounded sword arm.'

Lith glanced at the injury he had caused. The linens could be peeked through the tear of the man's coat with a touch of guilt. Aragorn said nothing further, and waited quite patiently as Lith considered. But, truly, what else had the Elf to lose now?

'Yes,' the Elf said at last. 'I will go with you, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, and gladly.'

They set out, keeping the Mitheithel some distance off on their right, and all the while the rain never ceased. The riverbank here was steeply cut and the river, swollen with the unrelenting rain, thundered past. Aragorn said that tomorrow they would reach the village of Tadoliant and could cross both the Mitheithel and the Bruinen via the old river bridges and approach Rivendell from the south. It might be faster to stay this side of the river and go north to meet the road as it left Bree, but with the waters so high Aragorn said he did not like to think how unpleasant crossing the wetlands around the South Downs would be. Lith did not disagree. 

They spoke little as they walked, for they both favoured the quiet, perhaps from habit, or from uncertainty with the other’s company. Aragorn set a steady but not urgent pace and he waited patiently when Lith darted aside to gather beech nuts, rosehips or sloe berries when the trees offered them up. Sometimes Lith found himself unable to resist commenting on the birdsong they heard or growths of vivid green mosses or the flights of swans overhead. Aragorn did not always seem to notice them until Lith pointed the sights out, and he seemed gravely appreciative when Lith did so. Lith watched him out of the corner of his eye, and wondered about this strange man, so un-manlike in his bearing and manner, as far as his experience of mortals would judge such things. Perhaps that was the blood of Númenor in him that gave him such an air. Or was it something else?

At length Aragorn seemed to realise that Lith was regarding him, curiously.

'I sense you have a question,' the man said. 'Ask it!' 

'You called Imladris your home,' said Lith, straight away. 'And yet Mithrandir said you were of the Dúnedain.'

'That is not a question,' Aragorn laughed, but he explained regardless. 'My father was killed when I was but a babe-in-arms. Lord Elrond fostered me in Imladris until I was of age to rejoin my people, and I still return there when need allows.'

Lith nodded, slowly. Aragorn had been raised by Elves then. That explained much, from his flawless yet Imladrin-accented Sindarin to the near silence of his step. But yet he did not seem to despise a Bodadêldir as much as was proper. Perhaps they were no longer warned about, or perhaps his crime was deemed less terrible to one of the Secondborn.

'They spoke of you at the Council,’ Lith offered. ‘Lord Elrond said you were descended through many fathers from Isildur, Elendil's son.'

'That is so,' the man agreed.

'Mithrandir also told me tales of the Dúnadan, the Chieftain of the north. I see now that he spoke of you. To you will come the rule of Gondor and Arnor, and all kingdoms of Men.'

'Not quite _all_ ,' Aragorn said with a slightly self-deprecating tone, and the Elf almost smiled. 'But yes, that lineage is mine to bear. A great weight of history lies upon me, though far will I have to go to fulfill the promise of that destiny.'

'A strange thing it seems,' said Lith, but he did not say more. He thought perhaps Aragorn understood regardless, for truly it was an odd parallel, the two of them together. One carrying an ancient birthright and a great lineage, the heritage of two thousand years and the expectations and hopes of so many peoples. The other, stripped of every bond and every trust, of family and home and friends until he had not even a claim to his own name. A strange thing indeed.

Another wet and cheerless night passed, for they had travelled out of the lowlands and Lith knew of no sheltered hollows to be found nearby in which to make a proper camp. They were drawing closer to Imladris and he had not often ventured this way. That night it proved beyond the skill of either traveller to bring a fire to life, and while the cold bothered Lith little except where it caused his scars to ache, by morning Aragorn looked chilled to the bone and the man shivered often. The Elf knew little of mortals, but he was aware that constant cold and wet could be dangerous to them and lead them to sicken. Lith was contemplating the journey ahead, when Aragorn suddenly said:

'You have taken an injury.'

Lith looked up startled and then down to where the man indicated. He had been unconsciously gripping his left arm tightly in his right hand. The pain there was a dull constant, but the cold and damp always made it worse. As long as he did not try to use his hand much, he could hold out a little longer yet. Lith released his grasp quickly, dropping both arms to his sides. 

'No. I am quite well,' he said, and when Aragorn continued to stare, added: 'It is a slight ache, nothing more.'

'Should I take a look?' Aragorn said, but Lith was already shouldering his pack and walking away. After all, he told the man, the rains carried on, and so must they. 

They talked little that day, spirits dampened by the endless rain. Aragorn’s thoughts seemed to be far away, and Lith could only guess what lofty concerns held them. Worry for the sons of Elrond, perhaps, and whatever journey it was that had taken them south from this place. Maybe they meant even to cross the mountains? Or perhaps Aragorn’s fears were greater still and he thought of the enemy’s ring that had come into the hands of the hobbit Frodo. Lith had heard much in the Council of Elrond that he did not understand, and many great and terrible events were described of which previously he knew nothing, even from Mithrandir who had taught him much. And he did not know what fate had been decided at the end of the Council, for the Wood-elves had grown tired of his presence before any debate had taken place and he had not thought it his place afterwards to ask what had been decided. After all, Mithrandir seemed to treat this ring with utmost secrecy, and it truly was no business of Lith’s what was to become of it. He could only hope the hobbits had been freed of their obligations and returned safely to their homes. He had never spoken to Frodo Baggins, but he liked what he knew of hobbits; an honest and cheerful folk who did not deserve to be torn from their homes and cast out into an uncaring world rife with trials and danger. 

It was hard to tell the passing of the hours with the sun still hidden behind a blanket of grey cloud, but Lith sensed it to be early afternoon when he was required to give Aragorn another demonstration of his crossbow. They were following along the line of the riverbank when there was a sudden sound from their right—a scrape of stone and earth—and Lith had the string drawn and a bolt to the groove before Aragorn had his sword half from its scabbard. Fortunately, the source of the sound required neither sword nor bow, for it was merely part of the riverbank crumbling away where the force of the rain-swollen river had pummeled away at an undercutting. No doubt the magical inundation Mithrandir and Lord Elrond had summoned which had flooded the ford of the Bruinen had also weakened the banks far downstream. The pair moved further from the water’s edge, just to be at a safe distance, and Lith released the string from his bow, returning the bolt to the small quiver hanging at his belt.

'Can you show me how it is drawn?' Aragorn asked, leaning in to look closer. He was indeed both persistent and curious. 'You moved too quickly then for me to see.'

Lith considered for a moment in silence. He was aware of the strangeness of his weapon, and Aragorn had proven to be highly intuitive. He did not want to bare all of his shameful secrets before the man, no more than were already to be read from the marks on his face, his mannish clothing and his unbraided hair. But at last he acquiesced, for refusing would have seemed churlish and no doubt would have raised more suspicion. Slowing his motions to perhaps a quarter, Lith turned the bow down to the earth, tucked the toe of his boot into the stirrup at the weapon’s head and then, with the long tiller laid along his leg, used the double hook hanging from his belt to draw the string back to the latch, ready to receive the bolt. Aragorn made him repeat the action twice more, then asked a few questions about the function of various parts of the bow and the design of the trigger. If the Ranger noted that the bow was designed to be drawn, loaded, and fired almost entirely with one hand, he did not say so. 

The light was fading towards a soft dusk beneath the clouded sky when they saw the outline of Tadoliant ahead of them. Of course it was around the same time, when shelter was finally sighted, that the rain lessened and then stopped entirely. As they made their way across the rolling fields to the village gate, the clouds even thinned enough to let shafts of sunlight filter through. They crossed the Mitheithel bridge and paused at its summit to watch the swirling waters below, high within the river's cutting and turgid with rain. Lith hesitated on the bridge as Aragorn moved on towards the village. The man at last noticed his delay and looked back, a question on his face.

'I…' said the Elf, and paused, not knowing how to explain. 'I need not stay within the village. The rain has stopped. I am content to sleep out in the fields.'

'Well, I am not,' Aragorn said. 'The rains may have paused for now but I deem this is but a brief respite. I know the people of this settlement, and they are not unfriendly to strangers. For a few copper they will willingly offer us shelter, and hot food too.'

'I have no coin,' said the Elf. He rarely ever did; it was difficult enough for men to find work within their own towns, he had been told over and over, let alone work for strangers or those of Elfkind. And regardless, coin was a precious commodity that must be saved at all costs, not squandered for something as fleeting as a dry bed.

'I do,' said Aragorn. 'And more than willing to part with it to see us both spend a night in the warm.'

Still, Lith hesitated. 

'What is wrong?' Aragorn asked, sounding impatient for the first time since they had met.

Lith sighed, knowing the man would not let this pass until he had explained. 'Though I am not forbidden from entering the settlements of men, there are folk other than Elves who know what this mark means,' and he turned his head so that his scarred cheek was briefly visible. 'I would not have us both beaten or thrown from the town on my account.'

'I promise you that will not happen here,' Aragorn said, firmly, and his expression did not even flicker at the Elf’s admission. 'I know these people. They are farmers and herders and craftsmen, not scholars of Elven culture. The ways of Elves are as unknowable to them as Dwarves or wizards are to us, and no one Elf will appear stranger than any other. But if it makes you feel more comfortable, I will go on ahead and speak with Goodwife Potter. She will let us sleep in the byre; it is warm and dry, and you can go directly there without needing to talk to any here face to face. Does that suit you?'

Lith once again submitted to Aragorn’s will, and the man went away up the low hillside towards the village, leaving Lith alone by the river. He stood on the bridge for a while, watching the eddies and swirls of the water beneath, thick and brown with silt and broken up by small tree branches. He had not seen the flood of the Bruinen, but he had overheard the others in Elrond’s house speak of it afterwards and it sounded both fearsome and awe-inspiring. He should have liked to witness it firsthand, especially the white horses. 

A sound caught his ear and he looked back upriver. Two young mannish children, he thought the smaller a boy and the larger a girl child, were running in the sunbeams through the meadow. They were laughing as they ran, kicking a red ball through the wet grass, and their clothes and shoes would soon be sodden but they did not care, for they were young and free and the sun had come out. Lith watched them for a while until their laughter and companionship made him homesick for something he did not dare to remember. The children played on, and if they saw him on the bridge they did not care to halt their game to investigate. 

Lith had glanced away back towards the town when it happened. There was a sudden shriek from one of the children, much closer than it had been before, and when he looked back he could only see the girl. The boy was gone. The girl cried out again, perhaps a name, and she was running towards the river. Lith looked down, and then he saw the little red ball being swept towards him by the current.  _ The boy was gone.  _

Lith didn’t pause another moment to consider if this was wise, or wonder if there was a better way. He dropped his pack and coat, kicked off his boots, and leapt from the bridge into the water. 

The cold was shocking, almost a physical blow beating against him the moment he struck the water. His chest heaved involuntarily and he choked as he was pulled under, but then his head came up and he spluttered and coughed, and started to swim. A flash of red nearby; the ball spun past on an eddie and away. Where was the child? The bloated, frigid waters pounded at Lith, numbing his arms and legs, dragging his body back even as he tried to swim against it, to raise himself up enough to look around. Something thudded against his torso. Just a branch; he pushed it away, still swimming, scanning the water. He could not see the child.

There was movement on the bank; the girl.

'Where?' Lith shouted in Westron, and the girl pointed; eyes white and terrified in her nut-brown face. He swam for the spot, saw a flash of black hair, a flailing hand, and he kicked hard, thrusting his arms below the water. He touched cloth and dived for it; a confusing rush of colour and mud and pounding, icy water, and then he had the boy in his arms. Lith kicked up and on, feeling the child weighing him down, the current trying to tear the small form out of his arms, and then Lith’s head broke the water. No time to check if the boy was breathing, Lith swam as hard as he could across the current, aiming for the bank, either bank. One desperate, searching hand caught a rock and he held on. Then the girl was there above him, reaching down for the boy and with one heave, Lith lifted the child out of the water and up into her arms. 

For a moment, everything was fine. For a moment that was what he thought. The boy was safe, the girl had him, Aragorn would come back and everything would be fine.

Then, there was a horrible, earthy crack, and the weakened river bank above him gave way. The earth crumbled beneath their feet and both children were dropped straight into the torrent. Mud and rocks and bodies cascaded down; something hit Lith in the temple, a rock or a boot, and for a moment he was stunned. Then ice water was filling his mouth again and he jolted back to awareness, struggling and kicking, grasping for the other body he could feel beside him. It had to be the girl, the heavy weight of her skirts pulling her straight down beneath the water. It took even longer to reach the surface this time, dragging her with him, and when he breached it, he saw they had both been swept on by the current beneath the bridge and out the other side. He hauled the girl up, trying to get her head out of the water and she struggled and kicked against him; her natural instinct to fight almost drowning them both. He wanted to shout, to yell at her to look for the boy, but there was no time and no breath to do it. Where was the other child?

Lith felt himself rapidly weakening; the cold of the river, the rushing flood waters and the agony of the child’s weight against his ruined arm sapping even Elvish strength. The boy had been swept away faster before due to his smaller stature, perhaps he was already further downstream…Lith turned to look and there! The boy was half-a-dozen paces away, clinging onto a torn-off tree limb; Lith could barely see the child in the gathering dark but the branch he was clinging to bobbed unnaturally against the flow of the current. Lith tightened his grip on the girl and kicked for the branch, his legs tangling in weeds, in debris, in the girl’s skirts, feeling her slipping from his weak grasp. He reached for the boy and pulled both children close but then both his arms were full. The current took them. 

The shadow of the bridge behind them was rapidly shrinking as the river swept them on. In just a few hundred feet they would reach the confluence with the Bruinen, and then the thundering rush of mountain water from both rivers combined would be too much for even a near-grown Elf to swim against. They would all be drowned without a doubt. Lith had to slow them down, now, in the hope someone would come to their rescue before they reached that point of no return. He knew he could not get both children out of the water alone, not any more. They needed help. Lith kicked for the nearest bank; there were roots and rocks and plantlife, there had to be something they could anchor to. 

'Hold on to me!' Lith shouted to the boy, but he didn’t know if the child heard. The girl had gone terrifyingly limp in his arms. He wrapped one arm around her, grabbed the boy’s belt in the same hand and reached for the shore with his left. 

The first trailing shrub he reached for he missed, the second tore away as he snatched at it. The third, a sturdy tree root, held, and suddenly the rushing water was beating against them as they stopped floating with the current and started to fight against it. Lith dragged the children as close as he could, holding them against the bank with his own body, sheltering them against the water that pounded his back, even as his feet scrambled for purchase against the mud. He found one foothold, and then all they could do was hold on. His legs burned, his chest was screaming for air, but none of it bore even the faintest resemblance to the pain in his arm, the arm that held onto the root, their lifeline, and yet it felt like fire was racing through it and he felt tears in his eyes. Hold on. Someone will come. _ Hold on.  _

The girl was slipping. He could feel his fingers weakening on the root, pain ripping through him. He was going to lose the girl, or let go of the root and lose both. He couldn’t hold on any longer, he--

'Lith!' A voice bellowed from above, and he caught a glimpse of dark hair and a hand stretched down. Aragorn was there. 

_ Take her! _ Lith wanted to say, but the water came up over his mouth and nothing came out but spluttering. Aragorn was lying up on the bank, reaching down but they were all too low in the water. He couldn’t reach!

With a desperate heave, Lith tore the boy out of the water, pushed off his foothold and shoved the child up towards Aragorn; the boy was lifted up and away. The girl slipped from the Elf's grip then as he knew she would, and at the same moment, his weak arm failed and the root tore from his grasp. Then two things happened at once. Lith caught a handful of the girl’s coat with his right hand just before she sank from sight, and a grip like iron closed around his outstretched left arm and yanked him back towards the bank. The sudden jolt almost tore the girl from him again, but through some last unknown reserve of strength he held on. The torrential rush of water dragged at him, stretching his body between the grip around his weak arm and the weight of the girl being pulled on by the current. Someone was shouting, more than one voice above, and then a rope too was being looped around his arm—easier to grip than his wet skin—and he was moving, being dragged back by his wrist, and someone was shouting, ' _ Raetha! Lith, amraetha!' _

Lith pulled the girl close, kicked up one last time, and then he pushed the child up into the air, reaching for the voice that commanded him. Even as his feet lost their grip and he sank back below the water, he felt her pulled from his grip, but not this time by the cruel, grasping waters but by warm hands. She was safe. Then the rope snapped tight around his left wrist, pain exploded again, and then he too was being dragged up to those warm hands that hauled him from the water and out onto the bank. 

For a long time everything passed in a daze. He heard voices and commands and the sound of weeping. There was something falling on his face like clumps of ash, but when Lith opened his eyes he realised that it was just raining again. He rolled over onto his side, pulling his arm in close and gritting his teeth against the throb of agony.

'Lith,' called an insistent voice. 'Lith.' Someone was patting his face, he thought, though it was hard to tell through the cold beat of the rain. 

_ 'Whoever thou art, leave me be,' _ he told them, the Green Tongue falling first from his mouth as it always did, even now.

'I do not know what that means,' said the voice. 'Open your eyes, Lith! You must tell me where you are hurt. I need you to speak to me.'

_ 'Art they safe?' _ Lith asked.

'I need you to speak to me in  _ Sindarin,' _ corrected the voice. 

'Mithrandir?'

'No, it is I. Aragorn. Did you strike your head?'

'Nay,' Lith said, being sure this time to mould his words from the correct language. 'Nay. The children. Do they live?'

He looked over to see half a dozen men clustered around two small figures, bearing them quickly away towards the town. It seemed to have grown quite dark. How long had they been in the water?

'They breathe,' Aragorn said. 'So that is hopeful. Quickly. We must follow them, and get you also into the warm.'

Aragorn’s hands guided him to sit up but Lith shrank back, clutching his arm to his chest. Even from just that small movement the pain was overwhelming. 'I cannot,' he said. 'I…' and then he found his voice was gone, and that he was weeping. 

'Carefully now,' said Aragorn, and he reached for Lith’s arm again, gently unwinding the knotted rope which had been looped around Lith’s forearm just as his strength had failed. It had been all that had saved them in the end, though he knew not if Aragorn had held it or some other. Then Aragorn was supporting Lith’s arm in close to his chest, and the man guided Lith up onto his feet.

They walked together up the road, through wooden gates into the village of men and at last into a rough barn. It was dark inside, but warm, and a shingle roof kept out the rain. All around were the sounds and smells of sleeping beasts. Lith stumbled to the darkest corner he could see, collapsed down in the straw and shivered, holding his arm close. Aragorn disappeared briefly and when he came back he had a lantern. 

'Let me see,' the man said, kneeling. He reached for Lith but Lith pulled away.

'No.'

'You’re hurt. I need to see it.' Aragorn pressed a callused palm to Lith’s forehead. Lith felt himself shiver. 'Ai, you are cold as ice.'

'Leave me alone,' Lith said, and pushed the hand away.

'Lith! I must go check on the children, but I need to see you are well first.'

'I am well. Go away!'

'Fine.' The man stood, reached aside, and then draped a thick, rough blanket around Lith’s shoulders. It smelled of horse. 'Stay here,' Aragorn ordered. 'Do not move. I will be back as quickly as I may.'

Lith said nothing, and then the man was gone. 

Lith curled up in the corner, aware of nothing for some time but the sickening beat of pain through his arm. He did not think it had been this bad since the wound was first new but it was difficult to judge. He needed his medicine but he could barely move or think where to find it. The pain rose and rose and then, after what seemed an Age, began at last to ebb and flow in long waves, and in the lulls between each peak, Lith began to regain his awareness. He was in a building in a mannish village. An animal byre. There had been children in the water, but he had saved them, and the man, Aragorn, the healer, was with them now. Lith must look to his own self. There was other pain too beside the agony of his arm. His body ached all over: head, legs and chest. Exhaustion clawed at him; he needed his herbs, he needed to sleep. His wet hair was plastered into his eyes and mouth, and his bare feet stung and burned with cold. It did not matter. He would be alright, as long as he had his medicine. He managed to open his eyes, looking around in the low glow of the lantern, and…

But his pack wasn’t there. No pack, no boots, no crossbow. Were they lost in the river? No, he had dropped them all on the bridge when he had dived into the water. In that pack was everything he had in the world, every item he had begged, stolen or scrounged, and painstakingly repaired a dozen times. And other treasures more precious than these. His medicine. And he had dropped his crossbow. He was alone here in this village and he had no bow. 

Lith staggered to his feet. The barn swam a little around him, unsteady as he was with cold and weariness, but he found the wall and stumbled to the door. He fumbled the latch with numb hands, pushed the portal open and stepped out into driving rain.

He had gone barely a dozen steps when a voice shouted out and a dark figure loomed up out of the rain and the night. Lith shrank back.

'Lith! What are you doing? I told you not to move.'

Aragorn reached for him; Lith knocked the hand away. 

'Where are you going?' Aragorn shouted through the rain. 

'My pack. My bow…'

'We’ll find them later. You must come inside. You will freeze, Elf or not!'

'My pack,' Lith said again. 'It’s all I have. Please.'

The man uttered a curse in some guttural tongue. 'If you go back inside I will try to find them. But you must get out of this storm!'

Lith did not remember agreeing, but the next thing he knew he was slumped on the dry earth floor of the barn, rough wood at his back, and Aragorn was saying: 'I’ll need to take the lantern with me.'

Lith nodded.

'Do you hear me?' Aragorn said. 'I’ll be right back but I need the light.'

'Yes,' Lith said.

He thought perhaps he slept then, though his thoughts fled far away into dark dreams that he could not control. When next he was aware, he felt a little warmer, everything smelled of horses and cattle dung, and someone was leaning over him in the gloom. He startled, badly frightened, and reached for a blade. A voice said; 'Hush. It is only I.' In the low light he saw it was the man, Aragorn. 

'You are safe here,' Aragorn said, calmly. 'I have found your things.'

Lith looked and saw it was the truth; his crossbow was against the wall, his pack at his feet.

'The children?' Lith asked.

'Their parents watch over them. There is nothing more I can do now; it is you I am concerned for. I must check your injuries.' 

'No,' Lith said. When the man reached for him again, he said, 'Do not touch me.'

'Don’t be a fool, Lith,' Aragorn hissed. 'You are in great pain, I can see, and at best you must be battered and bruised beyond measure.'

'I need no help from you,' Lith said, and fumbled for his pack. It was sodden and heavy, and trying to pull it closer was painfully slow, even when he held his arm as still as he could. 

Aragorn huffed an irritated sound, and easily lifted the pack from his grasp.

'What is this urgent thing you search for? Let me at least find that.'

Lith curled over his arm, and finally, in desperation, surrendered. 'In the pocket,' he said. 'A pouch of waxed brown leather. I need it.'

He heard rustling and muffled movements, and then there was a sharp, indrawn breath. Of course the man had opened the string to look inside, and he was a healer. He would recognise the scent. 

'This is _ naegranaeth _ ,' Aragorn said, his tone oddly flat. 'Pain-bite.'

Lith leaned over and took the pouch from the man’s hand. Aragorn was still speaking, words short clipped and angry, but Lith ignored him. He took two large pinches of the herb from the pouch and dropped them onto his tongue. Then he lay down, rolled himself up in the horse blanket, and knew no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blown away by all the lovely kudos and comments. Thank you! Keep 'em coming, I love hearing what you think.


	4. 21st November 3018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aragorn confronts Lith and some painful truths are brought to light.

It was mid morning before the Elf awoke. While Lith slept, Aragorn had been back to the potter’s house to check the children, and was most pleased to see them recovering well from their ordeal. The boy, Tómas, had broken an ankle in the second fall and Greta, his sister, bore a contusion the size of a dove egg on her temple, but their lungs were sound and clear of water, and they had no fevers. Their wits too seemed to be intact, which was perhaps more than could be said for Aragorn’s strange new Elven companion. 

Aragorn had returned to the byre as soon as he was satisfied with the children’s recovery, bearing a warmed cookpot of honeyed oatmeal, a fresh loaf, a bundle of dry clothes, and many concerned inquiries from the goodwife and goodman after the Elf’s wellbeing. They had wanted Aragorn to bring their children’s saviour into their home last night to warm and dry by the hearth, and Aragorn would have agreed but for the Elf’s erratic behaviour. Lith had clearly been injured during the river rescue and in pain so severe it had brought him to weeping, but yet he had rebuffed all attempts made to aid him. At one point Lith had even staggered back into the rain to try and find his wretched crossbow, and then later had actually drawn his knife on Aragorn. Aragorn had quickly disarmed him and secured both blade and bow when the Elf had fallen back into sleep, but someone that dangerous and unbalanced was not safe to bring into a home with children.

And that had been before Aragorn had found out about the _naegranaeth._

When Lith finally woke, the oatmeal was quite cold, their weapons cleaned and oiled, and the contents of their packs nearly dry. Aragorn had tended to his own wound - the crossbow bolt cut to his arm - and was seated on an upturned pail in the open doorway of the byre, watching the rain with his pipe between his teeth. When he heard a shuffle of cloth from the Elf’s corner, he finished his last draw of the leaf and carefully extinguished the sparks before he stepped back into the barn. Lith was hunched forward, his thin back curved like a willow whip, and his left arm pressed tightly to his chest. Beneath the usual wretched tangle of his pale hair, he bore an impressive blue bruise above his left eye and another to his jaw. In the gloom, the scars on his face stood out vividly, discoloured to purple against his pale skin. All in all he made for a pitiful sight.

The Elf looked up as Aragorn approached, his eyes wide and very dark. 

Aragorn leaned against the wall and folded his arms. 'You survived the night, then,' he said. 

Lith did nothing for a long moment, and then he nodded, once. 'Yes,' he agreed. 

'I would have helped you dress in dry clothes, but you did not seem inclined to accept my aid last night. The villagers have gifted us with spare shirts and breeches if your own clothes are still damp. There is also bread and porridge if you have a mind to eat.'

Lith blinked at this information. 'The children?' he said.

'Whole, if not quite hale. They will live and suffer no lasting effects. You saved their lives.'

Lith nodded again. He shivered, pulling the horse blanket close, and tucked his bare feet, still scratched and bloody from the river, in beneath his legs. 

'You seem cold,' Aragorn observed.

'I feel…' said Lith, and considered. 'I feel cold,' he concluded. 'Yes.'

'I would check your temperature if I can be assured you will not try to stab me again.'

The Elf tilted his head to one side, that oddly birdlike mannerism. 'You are angry,' he said. 

'Well observed.'

'Because I tried to stab you?'

'No,' Aragorn said, and sighed. He unfolded one of the new shirts the potter’s husband had given to him that morning and tossed it gently onto the straw beside Lith. 'No, that I understand; you were disoriented.'

'Then why? I saved the children.'

'That has nothing to do with...' Aragorn paused and recentred himself. He spoke calmly. 'I have only admiration for your courage and quick-thinking at the river. I am angry because you would not let me help you afterwards. And because of the pain-bite _.'_

Lith had picked up the dry shirt but did not make any move to strip his damp clothing or put the new garment on. He looked confused. 'I do not understand. Neither event has any bearing on you. Why should you be angry?'

'Pain-bite is so strong they use it to sedate horses, Lith!' Aragorn cried, losing his patience once again. The creature was exasperating. Baffling . 'Elbereth! Never mind that you will likely become dependent upon it, the amount you took could have stopped your heart. I have only seen Lord Elrond give that herb a handful of times, and only for those in direst pain. How did you even come by such a supply?'

Lith did not answer and that told Aragorn all. 

'You stole it,' he realised. 'From Elrond’s healing rooms at Imladris. Sweet Elbereth! Was that the true reason you came to the valley after all, then?'

Lith clenched his right fist. 'Your condemnation means nothing to me,' he said, tightly.

'I spent the night thinking you would die,' snapped Aragorn. 'From cold, from excessive dosage _,_ from this wound you will not let me see. I thought each breath might be your last. I dared not even sleep for fear I would find you cold and grey come morning. So do not dare to tell me it means nothing!'

Lith swallowed and looked away. He did not seem to know what to say. 

Aragorn sighed, and turned to fetch the bread and oatmeal. When he came back, the Elf had at last donned the dry shirt. It was comically large on Lith’s slender frame and made him look like a elfling dressing up in his father’s clothes. Aragorn wondered for the first time how old Lith was. The age of an Elf was nearly impossible to determine from their appearance alone except perhaps in the depths of their eyes, and in truth, once past their majority it mattered little. But there was avulnerability in Lith's distrust, his impulsiveness, and his constant fear, that in one of the Secondborn would only be seen as young.

'Eat,' Aragorn instructed as he handed over the end of the loaf, the porridge pot and a spoon. The Elf silently did as he was bid while Aragorn repacked from his own gear those things that had finally dried as well as the apples, flatbread and hard cheese the Goodwife had given them.

It was long after the sound of the spoon scraping the pot had gone silent that the Elf next spoke. 'I am...sorry,' he said, and he sounded it. 'I am not used to…You should not have been concerned on my account.'

Aragorn restrained himself from pointing out that an apology over Aragorn’s hurt feelings was not the recognition of the Elf’s reckless behaviour he had been seeking. Instead he crouched down in the straw near to the Elf, his healer’s kit in hand.

'I don’t want you to be sorry,' he said, quietly. 'I want you to let me help.'

As expected, Lith began to shy away. 'I do not need your help.'

'You were in so much pain last night you forgot how to speak Sindarin,' Aragorn said. 'Twice.'

Lith pulled his legs up tight to his chest, defensively. 'What is wrong with that?'

'You may have many hurts from your adventure in the river, and I know there is an injury to your wrist,' Aragorn said, and then forced himself to let his tone turn gentle once more. 'I believe you bear an old wound there, perhaps a broken bone, that did not heal right and is now worsened. The amount of pain-bite in your pack and the quantity you swallowed last night with no ill effect tells me you are often in pain and regularly resort to such medicines to find relief. Nothing about this situation is right. I can--'

He broke off as, with a sudden, erratic burst of movement, Lith darted forward to where Aragorn had hung the Elf's pack on a nail to dry. He rifled wildly through it, searching the pockets, but clearly did not find what he sought. Lith dropped the pack and then suddenly slammed his right fist into the wooden post. It was a wild, angry gesture that would have made Aragorn start if he were not keeping his own reactions so strictly controlled. The Elf turned to him, jaw tight.

'Return it to me,' he said.

Aragorn slowly reached into his own pocket and pulled out the leather pouch containing the fist-sized bundle of pain-bite, wrapped so carefully in its waxed parchment. He did not hand it over.

'That is mine,' snapped Lith, holding out his hand.

'That could be debated,' countered Aragorn. 'Tell me how often you take the herb.'

'That is none of your concern.' Lith all but snatched the pouch from Aragorn's hand and hid it away in a fold of his own clothing.

'Now _you_ are angry,' Aragorn said, sitting back.

'Because you will not leave me alone!' Lith cried out. 'You ask me endless questions; you demand to fix things that cannot be fixed! I am Kinslayer. I am _Bodadêldir_. I am Unnamed and irredeemable. I do not understand why you care! It is forbidden.'

'You may not have noticed but I am not an Elf,' Aragorn pointed out. 'Neither are we on Elven lands. Nothing forbids me from rendering you aid, and I would do so even if every law stood against it. I am a _healer_ , Lith; it is in my blood. I do not give two pins for what lies in your past. You are my friend and you are suffering. That is all that concerns me at the present.'

Lith’s eyes darted up at him again, almost shocked, and Aragorn thought it was perhaps not true to say the pain-bite dose had left no ill effects. The Elf’s pupils were wide and very dark, the drug no doubt still heavily in his system, numbing his senses and crumbling the foundations of his control. But perhaps Aragorn’s inadvertent use of the word _friend_ had had an even more intoxicating effect.

'What if I still do not wish it?' Lith said, at last.

'You made your refusal to accept aid abundantly clear last night,' Aragorn pointed out. 'And even when you were insensate I did not contravene it, beyond ensuring that you remained breathing. I would do the same now if that is really what you decide. But I ask you not to refuse. Please, let me help.'

At last, _at last,_ the Elf nodded. Barely louder than a whisper, he said, 'All right.'

It was not lost on Aragorn that until now Lith had flinched away from every touch or closeness. No doubt his life in exile meant he had little familiarity with kindly or well-meaning touches, and so Aragorn began with the Elf’s cut and scratched feet easing him into the physical proximity of another. Lith's feet were muddy and bleeding in several places and there were a number of long splinters which had pierced the sole of the right foot during the river escapade. Lith made not one sound as Aragorn cleaned the skin and then dug out the wood with tweezers. When he glanced up, Aragorn saw Lith was barely paying attention to the work, busy watching one of the nearby cows in its stall.

After the Elf’s feet, Aragorn then checked his legs, which were bruised but not bleeding, and then lifted his shirt to examine chest, belly and back, which were similarly battered and mottled with contusions although he was pleased to note bore no hardness or swelling denoting more serious internal injuries. A shallow slice across Lith’s ribs from some sharp stone needed cleaning but not needlework. All in all he was in remarkably good shape with regards to injury, given the frenzy of the torrent, and his lungs sounded clear. However, with his shirt raised it was clear to Aragorn that Lith was not so much _slender_ as _lean_ , thinned by long hardship and short rations that had left him hollow ribs and wiry muscle. Nothing that could be fixed now, and at least this morning he had eaten well. 

But at last they reached the Elf’s arms and the site of his hidden wound. Aragorn looked up to find Lith watching now with wide eyes. No distractions would work now; the Elf was sitting tense and alert like a wary deer.

'Are you certain you are willing?' Aragorn asked. Lith said nothing but thrust his left arm forward towards Aragorn before hiding his face behind his raised knees. Aragorn took the proffered limb gently, rolled the shirtsleeve back, and then carefully peeled away the damp and tattered woolen glove the Elf always wore beneath to expose the Elf’s wrist...and then all the way to the elbow.

There was no other word to describe the wound but _horrendous_. A long, ragged scar, as wide as Aragorn’s thumb, ran down the entire length of the Elf’s inner forearm from the crook of his elbow to the heel of his palm. The old flesh around the injury site was dark purple and puckered; old knots of scar tissue marked the line of erratic stitches so messy Aragorn knew the Elf must have done them himself. Just as his face, Lith’s arm had been cut and then the wound reopened over and over, perhaps for weeks, to disrupt the healing and then he had been abandoned to tend it alone. Aragorn tried to keep his breaths even, but even his slow-to-anger temperment was glowing hot like embers put to the bellows. If he had thought the scars to Lith’s face were needlessly disfiguring, those on arm were something else entirely, because there was only one reason Aragorn could see to make such a cruel and deliberate wound in that place. The cuts had been made to damage the tendons in Lith’s arm beyond repair. When they had cast him out, the Elves had made sure he would never draw a longbow again.

Aragorn forced the realisation away; this was not the moment to let free his anger and horror. That could come later, for now he must focus solely on what healing could be achieved. He examined the scar more closely. Though the wound was no doubt old, the ugly, deep scarring looked swollen and irritated from its recent trauma. He had already observed from their travels together that the Elf used the limb little except for balance when climbing, and he suspected gripping anything in the hand must be difficult. Holding the weight of a growth Elf and two human children against the raging current of the river must have been torture. That he had managed it at all had been a feat purely of mind over matter. But what could be done for such a wound now? Surgery might help realign the tendons and muscle beneath, or perhaps the wound could be eased with a series of therapeutic stretches and strengthening work. Perhaps not. But either way there was little Aragorn had in his pack that could do anything for a hurt like this. 

But what he could do, he did, using the last of his dried athelas to wash out the raised edges of the wound, then lightly massaging the scar with a salve of lavender, chamomile and flaxseed to cool the tormented skin. Goldenrod would do better to reduce the swelling, aloe too, but neither he had to hand, so he had to settle for wrapping the arm firmly in the softest cloth dressings he had to aid healing and reduce the inflammation.

At last, when he had done all he could, Aragorn carefully placed the Elf’s arm back in his lap. Lith did not look up at him or speak, so Aragorn stood up, turned away, and walked quietly out of the barn. He kept walking until he found the wood pile at the back of the potter’s house, and then he picked up the small hatchet embedded in the cutting block and set to reducing every one of the uncut logs to kindling.

It was perhaps half an hour before he felt calm enough to return to the byre. When Aragorn walked back inside, the last stall, the empty one where Lith had slept seemed oddly still. As the Ranger approached, he realised Lith's crossbow was gone from its place by the wall. So too were Lith's shirt, boots and other odd trinkets from his meagre pack that had been spread around to dry.

The Elf had packed his things and was gone.

* * *

Aragorn left Tadoliant in the late morning, and crossed the second bridge over to the south bank of the Bruinen to begin the last leg of his journey north alone. The weather had finally turned dry again and the cold that came with it was respite at least from the rain. It was by now past mid November and given no more delays he should reach Imladris before month's end. His thoughts turned often towards his brothers and their errand to Lórien, and of the perilous journey they had made across the Redhorn gate. He was not yet privy to the route that Gandalf and Elrond might have devised for the ringbearer and his companions, but it seemed all too likely that thither they should soon also tread, and Aragorn with them. And once across the mountains, what then? Did they bring Frodo and his dangerous burden to Gondor and thence through the Ephel Duath? Or did Aragorn leave Gandalf to storm the Morannon alone, and take his own road with Boromir to the White City and to war? This quest for the ring - was it no more than a fool’s hope? Or was it indeed their only hope?

He let his mind be filled with his concerns for the future, worries for the success of their vital quest, and for once those cares were almost a relief for they meant he was not thinking about Lith.

Aragorn did not imagine he would see the exiled Elf again, certain as he was that he had driven Lith away with his misplaced anger and relentless questions. So it was something of a surprise when, following an old sheep track around the foot of a shallow outcrop of grey rock, he suddenly scented lavender and chamomile salve on the air. Aragorn glanced up and there was Lith, perched in a crouch on the rock above like a wild mountain cat spying a predator passing too close to its territory. The Elf was still as the stone around, watching him with eyes as grey-blue as a storm at sea.

Aragorn did not acknowledge the Elf's presence. If Lith wanted to speak or approach he would do so in his own time. Aragorn walked on, and with a quiet rustle of cloth and the clink of his pack, the Elf dropped onto the path behind him and fell into step. In truth, Aragorn had not even known the Elf was near; he had seen no prints nor sensed he was being observed. But now that he knew Lith followed, he was aware of the perceptible tread of his makeshift boots on the rock and the slightly uneven gait of his steps. No Elf was usually so graceless nor so loud. Naegranaeth dulled pain, that was true, but it also cast a shade over all the body's other senses too. Aragorn held his tongue and said nothing.

They continued on for perhaps another hour, Aragorn leading and the Elf like his shadow following behind. The ground remained damp and boggy underfoot, although at last the terrain began to rise as clusters of rock broke through the beds of reeds, mallow and wild water mint. 

At long last, Lith broke the silence. 'You must not think me wronged,' he said, softly.

Aragorn tilted his head to acknowledge that the Elf had spoken, but he did not interrupt.

'I deserved it,' Lith continued. 'All of it, and more. Everything they did I deserved.'

Aragorn considered for a long moment. Even now, exiled and disfigured and despised, it seemed Lith still had some shreds of Elvish pride left. He did not want sympathy from any. 

'I do not pity you,' Aragorn said, eventually. 'I know that you committed a crime, a terrible one, and have been punished according to Elvish law. But whatever your crime, I do not think your suffering can be just, and I find it hard to forgive those that treated you so cruelly.'

They spoke little after that. The fragile peace between them held, though the easy, quiet camaraderie they had shared before the incident at Tadoliant was gone, for now. But Aragorn couldn't help but notice that even despite their present tension with each other they made a good team. With their combined knowledge of the land around, they traveled a good distance over the day. Aragorn picked out sure and safe paths up into the foothills, and that night, Lith managed to find them another sheltered campsite deep in a stand of pine trees. He even brought down a plump duck using his crossbow, a skilled shot in the dusk light, and when cooked with the burdock root, rosehips and winter-nettle leaves he foraged would make an excellent meal.

As they camped, Aragorn prepared the bird and spitted it over the fire. He was glad again for the Elf’s skill with a flint, for without it they would have been able to get nothing to burn that night. As Aragorn cooked, the Elf sat a short distance away within the circle of light. All day Lith's movements had been frenetic, fidgety and graceless. Now he was sharpening the blade of his heavy, double-bladed knife and had been doing so for so long that the movement of the whetstone seemed compulsive repetition rather than a necessary task. Aragorn watched him out of the corner of his eye, noticing Lith had the knife handle trapped between his boot and a rock rather than holding it in his left hand. The scarred limb was tucked out of sight beneath his coat.

'How fares your arm?' Aragorn asked, quietly. As he expected, Lith tensed at the question and turned slightly, almost as if he was readying himself to flee again. But then, as if after a conscious effort, he breathed slowly out and Aragorn saw some of his wariness ease. But the limb stayed pressed protectively to his chest.

'It hurts,' Lith said, simply, and Aragorn believed it. The Elf looked washed out and tight-lipped with pain.

'You have never shown that wound to another, have you?' Aragorn hazarded. 

'No.'

'Not even Mithrandir?'

'No, but then he is...less _persistent_ than you.'

Aragorn gave a slight laugh. He would disagree with that assessment: wizards could out stubborn anyone.

'I did not want…' Lith began, as if needing to explain himself. He started moving the whetstone again. 'It is my punishment to bear.'

Aragorn nodded, although he was not entirely sure he understood. But what he had learned was that Elrond had not seen nor treated the wound while Lith had last been in Imladris. The Elf-lord was the greatest healer in Middle-earth, and until Elrond himself declared the case hopeless, Aragorn was sure there was still a chance something could be done to restore the function of the arm, or at the very least ease this constant pain. If Lith could be persuaded to come back into the Hidden Valley, that was. Exile or not, Aragorn was confident that Elrond would not refuse to treat him once he was made aware of the wound.

They ate in silence and now it did not feel uncomfortable. The bird was slightly scorched on one side but it was good and hot, and a marvellous improvement on the cold, dry rations Aragorn was used to. Lith ate slowly, one-handed. Once they were done, Aragorn disappeared out of the circle of firelight, taking the rest of the carcass and viscera away to bury some distance from the camp to keep wild animals from following the scent. When he returned he was surprised to find Lith had not disappeared into one of the nearby trees as was his usual habit but still sat by the fireside, staring unseeing into the flames. His normally sharp gaze was dulled and his fidgeting stilled, hands resting lethargically in his lap. The signs were clear; while Aragorn had been gone Lith had taken another dose of pain-bite.

'Rest,' Aragorn instructed wearily as he sat down. 'I will take the watch.'

Lith blinked slowly, then looked up. The dark of his eyes was wide and black, like pools of spilled ink. He had taken _a lot_ of pain-bite.

'I would wager you got little sleep last night,' Lith said, at last, slowly. 'It is my turn to take watch.'

'Nevertheless,' said Aragorn, and settled himself with his pipe. He did not feel the need to explain further.

'I am not an invalid,' said Lith with a touch of heat in his tone.

'Maybe not. But neither are you fit. You have just taken another dose of pain-bite; you have been taking it all day. Your reactions are slowed, your instincts suppressed _..._ '

Lith frowned at him. 'I am fine. I can watch.'

'No,' said Aragorn, keeping his tone level. 'Your judgement is impaired. I will not permit it. Sleep until the herb has worn off.'

'You think I cannot be trusted,' the Elf said, low, almost angry.

'How can I not?' Aragorn pointed out. 'While you dull your wits with herbs every chance you get?'

Not to mention that Lith had stolen that same medicine from Elrond’s house, while Elrond had sheltered him against all demands of Elvish law. Not to mention that Lith was a _murderer_.

'I do not take it for fun!' Lith hissed. He scrambled to his feet and took a step as if he meant to flee into the trees, but then he swayed and sat again, almost involuntarily. The sedative effects would barely even let him stand.

'Sleep,' Aragorn said, shortly.

Lith said nothing else after that but lay down, staring into the fire. Aragorn took up his place on the other side, facing away into the dark, watching and listening for any unexpected movement. In truth there was probably no need for a watch this night; these lands were kept well clear of wargs and goblins by the sons of Elrond. But shared watches and good nights of sleep were the main benefit of a travelling companion. In theory.

Lith at last succumbed either to sleep or Elven reverie because Aragorn heard his soft breathing slow and even out beneath the crackle and occasional pop of the fire. Aragorn smoked his pipe until it was empty then stretched and paced out his own tiredness as the moon rose, a glimmer of silver through the thick, scented needles of the evergreens. Perhaps only an hour had passed before the Elf made a strange sound, almost a gasp of fear, and Aragorn turned to see him bolt up, wide eyed and reaching for his knife. Then he seemed to startle fully awake and at last realise where he was, for he stilled and the blade vanished once more.

That Lith was having poor dreams at all was another effect of the pain-bite; Elvish reverie allowed dreamers to walk in living memory of their own choosing, not suffer the half fantastical ramblings of mortal dreams. Aragorn was about to ask what the Elf had dreamed, but Lith had quickly dismissed his night terror and lay back down again. The night was very quiet. 

Then, very softly, Lith murmured, 'I did not go to Imladris to steal.'

'All right,' said Aragorn, neutrally.

'I speak the truth. I did not plan it, but the opportunity was there and I was... desperate.'

Aragorn recognised the tactic at work; Lith was trying to make amends for the anger he had caused by offering the only thing of value he had. The truth. Luckily it was a currency Aragorn was most anxious to receive.

'This was after the Council?' Aragorn asked.

Lith hummed but did not answer. 

'But you have taken sedative herbs before, I deem. Many times, for you to need a dose so strong. Where do you usually get it?'

'There are wild plants that have the same effect if one knows where to seek them,' Lith said. 'And merchants from Rhûn and South Gondor, who travel the Greenway and the Old South Road with herbalists' supplies. But the roads are less safe now and fewer make such journeys. I had no other choice.'

'And Imladris? Why _did_ you go there?'

'Mithrandir, of course,' Lith said, and now that he had begun to talk it was almost as if he could not stop. 'Mithrandir said he could not stand against the wraiths alone without help. I did what I could to aid him on the road, but in my foolishness and weakness I let him lure me into the Valley itself. Once I saw the first spire of the Homely House I could not turn away. I was prepared for the scorn of the Ñoldor but I did not know others would come. I tried to leave when I saw the Wood-elves arrive but Mithrandir would not let me.'

Aragorn looked into the dark and tried to picture seeing Imladris again for the first time in centuries. What must it have been like for Lith to see an elven home again after Aragorn did not like to guess how long? To be inundated once more by the peace and strength infused into the very earth around the Valley. It must have been blindingly beautiful. Enchanting. Intoxicating. No wonder Lith had not been able to turn back. It must have been wonderful.

'I wish I had never gone there at all,' Lith said, with startling bitterness.

'Why is that?' Aragorn said, surprised. Surely any time spent in Elrond’s house could only be a balm, even if Lith had been spurned by the other Elves and his exit less than gracious.

'It was weakness,' Lith said. His voice was very soft like one who spoke in a dream. 'I gave in to my longing to see Elven halls again, to walk amongst Elvish faces and hear their songs. It was a mistake. It hurt all the more to leave and now my exile seems harder to bear than ever before. The night is always darker after a burst of light. Now I am blind and heartsick.'

Lith seemed suddenly to realise how openly he was speaking, for he went abruptly quiet and then rolled over, away from Aragorn. There was silence for a long time, before Aragorn heard him all but whisper, on the very edge of hearing.

'I do not know how much longer I can bear it.'

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've loved all the comments and kudos, thank you so much! It really helps to know people are enjoying it.
> 
> A few folks over on FFN have asked about the completion status - This first part 'All those who wander' is completely written (there are seven chapters), but I'm keeping this present posting schedule to try give me time to finish the second part of the series too, which picks up immediately where this one finishes. I'd say Part 2 is around 3/4s done, so here's hoping.
> 
> Big love, as always.  
> E x


	5. 22nd November 3018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The travellers continue to head north, but soon find themselves hunted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an eye on those tags, friends.

### 22nd November 3018

Aragorn’s endurance had been long honed by years of hardship, but even he could not go indefinitely without sleep. When Lith woke again, after moonset but still some hours from dawn, Aragorn deemed the drug to have passed sufficiently that he allowed the silent Elf to take over the watch. Aragorn could do nothing but hope Lith was up to the task, and he cast himself on the ground to snatch some few hours of rest. His own dreams were disquieting: a thick mist clouded his mind, shifting and obscuring. He saw snatches of battles long past and heard voices, both evil and benign. The fog rolled away, and Gandalf strode out of the mists, speaking stern orders to him in a language he could not comprehend. 

'I do not know what it is you ask of me,' Aragorn had said, and the wizard finally answered, rather crossly, in Westron.

'You must trust _yourself_ as I have been saying all along, son of Arathorn! Don’t you listen? Remember that from the ashes comes fire, but that not all fire destroys, and that evil thrives just as well within inaction as cruelty.'

'You speak in riddles,' Aragorn had replied, tersely.

'Well, here is plain speak for you. Don’t you dare forsake him! He will need you, and you will need him too, before the end.'

'Who will? Frodo?'

Gandalf had snorted, and then Aragorn had woken up: bleary and shivering beneath a blanket crackling with a thick coating of frost.

Lith was quiet that morning. In itself that was not saying very much, but Aragorn barely heard ten words from the Elf as they broke camp. Even a flock of wild swans passing overhead prompted not a word from Lith, which was a shame as his clear delight in nature had been the only part of him which until now had not seemed touched by melancholy. Aragorn was not certain how much of last night’s words the Elf remembered, for forgetfulness could also be a symptom in those who abused _naegranaeth._ But so also was woolly-headedness and numbed thoughts, and Aragorn himself could claim little better today for all that he had taken no herb. The rain and the cold seemed to have settled into a dull ache behind his eyes and in his throat.

For all that the terrain improved the further they went into the foothills, the slower their pace seemed to be. Aragorn found himself weary beyond words, while Lith was twitchy and unsettled, holding his damaged arm in close and glancing constantly behind them. He had taken no pain-bite since last night that Aragorn could discern, perhaps due to Aragorn’s clear disapproval, or in dismay at his own passing fit of garrulousness. Either way it was clear that he still suffered, and Aragorn felt some shame at his own vocal condemnation of the Elf’s habits. As Lith had said, he did not take the pain-bite for pleasure but from a desperate need. Aragorn resolved not to mention it again and to henceforth cease meddling in the Elf's decisions. He was neither Aragorn's patient nor a child under his charge. Lith must make his own choices and Aragorn had no authority to criticize them.

The travellers took a brief rest at noon, shielded from the cold wind by scrubby bushes, and ate the rest of the duck meat cold with dried fruit. The Bruinen had delved into a deep cutting a few hours before and for the first time on their journey could not be seen as it wound away behind the hills. There was no concern of losing their way though, for Aragorn knew the land here well, and Lith said he could still smell and hear the river and its direction. Aragorn had chosen a path that led up the side of a cleft in the hillside and, though it was narrow and climbed steeply, he hoped it would bring them out onto a plateau above that would run parallel to the river and offer flatter footing for some miles. 

Once they had eaten, Aragorn had risen and started to walk on again when he became aware that he could not hear Lith moving behind him. He turned back to see the Elf paused on the narrow track, head tilted as if listening, expression far away. 

'What is it?' Aragorn asked.

Lith started and came back to himself. 'Nothing,' he said, quickly, and followed along after the man. 

They had been walking less than half an hour before Lith made the same motion again, this time looking back down the track. 

'What do you hear?' Aragorn prompted. 

Lith hesitated.

'Speak,' Aragorn urged him. 

'I am not sure,' Lith said. 'I thought for a moment I _smelled_ something.'

'What type of something?' Aragorn said, trying not to sound exasperated with the Elf’s vagueness. 'Enemy or ally? Fresh baked bread or freshly spilled viscera?'

Lith actually laughed at that, a quicksilver burst of bright sound that quite took Aragorn by surprise for he had not known the Elf capable of it. 'Nay, nay,' Lith said. 'Probably it was nothing. But I did think for a moment I smelled wolf.'

Aragorn frowned, considering. Normally this would be a strange place to meet a wolf pack. There was little to hunt in these lands, and the wolves much preferred the forests of Hollin to the south. But the Rangers in Tharbad had reported the packs growing bolder and roaming further afield and closer to the Greyflood. Aragorn looked up and down: the path meandered little and there was no sign of movement on the track as far as sight allowed. He himself had neither heard nor smelled anything. Still it would be foolish to take such a warning lightly, even if he privately suspected the Elf's report likely unsubstantiated.

'We will carry on,' Aragorn said. 'But keep your nose on alert, and your ears too, for if there is a pack in these parts we should hear it before they us.'

'They say the wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears,' said Lith as they walked on. 'But I do not know what they say of the wolf one smells.'

'That is a Gondorian saying,' Aragorn noted, surprised. 

'I have travelled to many places,' Lith said. 'As it seems have you, to know such a thing. That is a surprise to me.'

'I am a Ranger,' Aragorn said, with a shrug. 'We are wanderers by our nature. As I said at the council I have travelled far throughout the old kingdom of Arnor, to the south through Rohan and Gondor under the strange stars of Rhûn and Harad, north through Mirkwood, and even to the east.'

'Then you have travelled even further than I. You have achieved much when many men barely stray beyond their homesteads in their brief time. The lives of the Edain seem to me so fleeting...' Lith began and then stopped abruptly. 'Forgive me,' he said, quickly. 'That was impolite.'

Aragorn laughed. 'It was not,' he said. 'For it is not news to men that we are mortal. But your estimate is not wrong, for the blood of Númenor grants me longer life than most, who would find such journeys as this quite the challenge when nearing their ninetieth year, as I am. But I am no longer young even in the reckoning of Men of the Ancient Houses, though I hope to live a while longer yet.'

The Elf nodded, slowly, considering carefully what he had learned. Lith’s temperament today seemed much improved from the black mood of the previous night, his mercurial humours shifting again as swiftly as the sun moving out from behind a windswept cloud. This new inquisitiveness was rather endearing, Aragorn thought, and wondered if he might risk the easy air between them by satisfying some of his own curiosity.

'Might I ask the same of you?'

'Hmm?' the Elf said, looking up.

'Your age. How long have you walked Middle-earth?'

Lith seemed surprised. Then he made a little gesture with his good hand, thin fingers spread wide. 'Actually, I do not know.'

'You don’t _know?_ How does that come to pass?'

Lith’s mouth twisted into a resigned frown that was slightly wistful. 'The year of my birth was not spoken of, and I have made no count of the running years since. The world moves both very swift and very slow. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in a long, long stream.'

'Presently, it is 3018 of the Third Age,' said Aragorn, who understood the way of Elves well enough to know a flowery answer was sometimes no more than an obfuscation. 'Or 1418 by the Shire calender.'

'Oh,' said Lith.

'Does that help?'

'Not especially,' said the Elf. He looked up as he was counting to himself. 'I suppose I must be somewhere near my fourth _în_ then, but in truth I do not think it matters much.'

It mattered, Aragorn thought, because if the Elf’s calculation was even close to correct he was not only young, but younger than Aragorn had ever considered he might be. Of course, Elves understood time very differently to the Edain, and they grew and matured in mind and body very differently than did the short-lived races. Though they may appear in form like a full grown Adan by eighty or a hundred years old, it was not custom amongst the Ñoldorin to consider an Elf to have come of age until at least his eighth _în_ , the _în_ being a standard measurement of 144 summers. Lith could therefore be no older than the last quarter of his fifth century, and barely halfway to his majority _._ Even Peregrin Took was older by the reckoning of halflings. Lith’s people had scarred him and cast him out into the wilderness when he was little more than a child.

'Is aught amiss?' Lith asked, suddenly, pulling Aragorn from his thoughts.

'Nay,' the Ranger assured, and cast around for something to say while he processed this new development. 'I was just thinking of your wolf. Over the course of my long life I have had far more than my fair share of encounters with wolves. I am not overly willing to meet any more.'

'Wolves may not feel inclined to abide by your wishes,' Lith pointed out.

'They may not. But I do try to limit myself to just one near-fatal misadventure per journey, and I believe you have already fulfilled our quota in that regard. So let us hope your nose was mistaken!'

Lith smiled, and they continued on. 

Unfortunately, Lith’s senses proved more than accurate, although so too was Aragorn’s reading of the wild. No wolf pack was this, but a lone she-wolf, perhaps cast out or searching for a new pack. That she was alone made her no less dangerous, for unless it was the depth of winter, a pack would usually go after easier prey than travellers, like deer or mountain goats, confident in catching a meal with little peril to themselves. Lone wolves hunted other, more difficult prey, and they were known to be both more intelligent, more desperate and far more aggressive than pack wolves. 

An hour later Aragorn spotted their first proof of her. The scat was mostly crushed bone and fur but looked less than 12 hours old. The man started to look around for more traces as they followed the track up along the dingle, and soon found one. 

'Here,' he said, crouching in the soft earth by a stream. 'A good, clear print, and freshly made since the rain stopped. And look!'

He laid his hand beside the huge print, and the claws reached almost to the last joint of his finger. 

'A _brôgaraf,'_ said Lith, using the old Sindarin name. Aragorn nodded. 

'Deep-wolves we call them amongst the Rangers. This one is large, even for that species, though at least we know she is no warg and probably not in league with the enemy. I do not think she will trouble us, for she no doubt smelled us before you did her.'

But just as at the river bank, luck was not on their side. As the day wore on Lith sensed the wolf again, twice in passing, and then constantly, as if she trailed them. They heard no howls or saw any sight of her beyond a flicker of movement along the shadow of a rock stack. But there could be no doubt that they were being tracked.

That night Aragorn decided not to camp but to journey on through the dark. The chances of being set upon by the wolf were far too great if they stayed stationary. There was little hope of outrunning a deep-wolf without horses, but if they kept moving and avoided the better footing of the sheep path, she might find some other game and lose interest. 

It was a cold night, and dark, and the full chill of winter was upon them this close to the mountains. Aragorn pulled his coat and outer cloak tight about him, and though he should be warmed from the movement of walking, he found the cold to be creeping and pervasive. At least it would not snow, not yet. The night sky was clear of clouds and Elbereth’s jewels were strewn bright as crystals across a black tapestry without the garish moon to dull them. Lith saw Aragorn glancing up at the stars as he checked his navigation was sound.

'The light of pure memory,' the Elf murmured, and then looked away, as if he regretted speaking aloud. 

As was usual for the Eldar, Lith seemed largely unconcerned by the cold, though he still held his damaged arm tightly as if the chill crept into the bone itself. Aragorn had offered to sling it for him, but the Elf had declined, just pulling on the woollen glove he wore over Aragorn's bandages. If he had taken more of the pain-bite Aragorn could not tell. 

They walked on in silence. Sunlight, Aragorn thought, showed too many things in contrast. Aragorn’s journey and his great destiny, Lith’s exile and hopeless wandering. Too many cares and tasks to complete, too insurmountable the barriers and responsibilities that lay between them. Here though, in the gentle dark beneath the stars, their nascent bond seemed more tangible, less fraught with uncertainty. Here secrets were less unkind, and answers, maybe, could be revealed.

So Aragorn spoke, out into the dark, 'Would you answer me a question, if I were to ask it?' 

'I cannot say,' Lith answered, thoughtfully. 'Until you ask. Then we shall see.'

'Will you tell me of what it means to be _Bodadêldir?_ The Wood-elves said you were _Penenith_. Unnamed. For all I thought I was well versed in Elvish law and custom, this is something I know nothing of.' 

Lith walked close enough that Aragorn felt him flinch at the word _Penenith_ , but at length he spoke, his voice coming out of the dark soft and slow like one reciting an old poem. 'A _Bodadêldir_ forfeits all that once was his, by gift or blood. His name is taken from him, and no longer has he kin nor kith in this world nor any other. His memories are as stolen treasures that he keeps like a thief, for they belong not to him. Since to be Eldar is identified by lineage and tale and memory, he cannot even truly be said to be Elfkind. He is Unnamed. A non-thing. For any to act otherwise is a crime against all the Eldar and the natural order of the world.'

Aragorn listened to Lith’s words in thoughtful silence. He thought of Lith’s ruined bow arm, of his marked face, of his hair tangled and unbound and lacking the _lamfinnel,_ the braid-words, that spoke at a glance to one could read them of an Elf's heritage and chosen path. Lith had nothing. But he could not truly be considered _Unnamed_ for he bore the name Lith, as curious an epithet as it was.

At long last, Aragorn said, 'I did not hear any of the Elves call you Lith. Not even Elrond did so. I guess now it is not one of your birth names. How came you then to chose it?'

'I did not. That would be forbidden.'

'Then where did it come from?'

'Is that such a mystery?' said Lith, with a breath of a laugh that sounded almost fond. 'From Mithrandir, of course. He renamed me when none other would have dared, not even I. Though I think he did not know then what it meant to do so, or what consequence it might have. Perhaps he still does not.'

'He has always been fearless,' Aragorn agreed, not in the least surprised to hear the wizard had been involved. 'But ‘tis a strange name, nonetheless. Why did he name you _‘ashes’_?'

'There was a fire,' Lith said. 'In a village of men, far from here. I tried to save a family that were trapped and was myself overcome by smoke. Mithrandir happened to be close and they called him to aid. He said afterwards that when he arrived I was quite blackened with smoke and my hair was as grey as wood ash.'

'Did you save them?' Aragorn asked. 'The family.'

Lith gave a tiny smile. 'Yes,' he said. Then he froze, and his hand went to his crossbow. 'The wolf,' he said, with sharp focus. 'She draws near.'

They did not speak again but hurried on. Aragorn wondered briefly about stopping to light a fire or torches, but it was said the deep-wolves so rarely came near to men that they had no fear of flames. Their best option was to reach high ground where they had the chance of seeing her approaching, and might drive her off with arrows.

It was near dawn when the wolf finally attacked. The travellers had taken a diversion east to try and avoid the wolf’s hunting track, though their route was suddenly bisected by steep-sided gully that cut towards the distant river. They had been forced to descend and follow along the base of the cutting for some miles until it shallowed sufficiently that they could climb out of its steep sides.

Lith climbed up first. Aragorn had hovered close behind in case the Elf’s grip should fail. But Lith did not falter; even with only three working limbs he scampered as easily as a squirrel up the low cliff and disappearing over the lip, a deeper black silhouette against the night sky. Aragorn was only a few feet behind when he heard a sharp whistle he could not interpret and then the unmistakable creak and twang of the crossbow firing.

'Lith?' He shouted.

'The wolf!' Lith cried out, and Aragorn realised he had underestimated the she-wolf’s cunning, for she had waited until they could neither see her nor catch her scent, and had then struck as they were separated. 

Aragorn reached for the top of the cleft and scrambled up onto the ledge, drawing his sword. It was so dark that for a moment he could see nothing, the Elf’s muted clothing and the near black of the deep-wolf’s fur both merging with the shadowy grass. Then with a lightning flash, claws slashed out at him from the right. Aragorn threw himself aside at the last moment and heard the crossbow fire again, and then once more. The wolf let out a short bark, and then, with a blur of movement, the creature turned and disappeared into the night.

Aragorn leapt up and put his back to Lith’s. The pair stood still for a long moment, facing out into the dark, but the wolf did not return. 

'Do you hear anything?' Aragorn asked, low and urgent.

'No,' Lith answered, just as softly. 'I believe we have driven her off, for now.'

Aragorn did not dare to relax much. He sheathed his sword but kept it loose and close to hand. 'We should move on,' he said. 'It will not do to linger here when she may yet return. Are you hurt?'

'No,' said Lith. 'She appeared from the dark as I climbed up out of the cleft but I managed to evade her jaws. Are you?' 

'I am unharmed. She took a swipe at me, but I wager my poor coat took more damage than my hide.'

'That garment does appear more patch than coat,' said Lith, gravely, though he sounded relieved, and truly was not one to talk. 

'Come,' said Aragorn. 'Let us leave this place as quickly as we may. The wolf will be near. Keep your bow close at hand!'

The wolf did not return for the rest of the night, and Aragorn started to hope they had driven her off for good. Despite a brief search they had only found one of Lith’s crossbow bolts and it was possible the others had found their mark although the Elf admitted he thought it unlikely; he had not a good sight on the beast when he had fired. Dawn finally arrived, and as they walked the sun slowly rose behind the distant mountains, though it bought no warmth with it and only enough light to glimmer gold off the freezing fog that lay close in the hollows of the hills. Indeed the gilded mists were rather beautiful to behold, though Aragorn paid the sight little mind, being both too cold and wearied to notice anything but for the way the fog smothered their senses.

Aragorn turned to speak to Lith to propose they find somewhere to camp for a few hours, and as he looked back to the Elf, a huge black shape launched itself out of the fog. Aragorn gave a cry but it was too late: the huge wolf struck Lith hard and sent him tumbling to the ground.

Aragorn ran in with a shout, pulling his sword free. Lith seemed to be pinned, struggling beneath the beast; the wolf lowered its great jaws forward towards the Elf's head, teeth gleaming. Then Aragorn was there, slashing down with his sword across the wolf's back. The wolf howled and, seeming to forget Lith, leapt towards the man instead. Aragorn caught her across the muzzle with his backswing, then jabbed the blade forward with another shout, aiming for her soft throat. He felt the blade bite. But then the wolf turned, and somehow the hilt was torn from his grip and the sword flew away into the grass. Aragorn had to jump back, turning to avoid slashing claws, and then the wolf’s massive jaws closed over his leg as the beast tried to tear out the muscle in his calf. Teeth sank into the leather of his boot and Aragorn was yanked back off his feet. The man struck the ground hard and there was no time for stunned breathlessness. His hands scrabbled for his knife and he kicked out wildly, trying to free his leg…

A nimble shape vaulted across the wolf’s back. Lith landed lightly near her head; a flash of bloody silver and the wolf released her prey with a yelp and darted back. Lith stayed low, crouched between Aragorn and the wolf, and Aragorn saw that the Elf had snatched up Aragorn’s own sword, blade raised out towards the beast. The wolf snarled and then howled. Lith snarled back, feral and strange. 

The three remained frozen for a moment in their tableau; Aragorn on his back on the ground, the wild Elf crouched over him, sword raised, and the wolf with teeth bared, ready to strike, watching them with yellow eyes. 

Then Lith spoke. Not Westron or Sindarin, nor even the Silvan dialect he had spoken before, but a long line of sybiliant words in a tongue Aragorn had never heard. As if in response the wolf began a low growl in the back of her throat, a sound that went on and on, and all the while the Elf continued to speak in that strange tongue that sounded like a mix of birdsong and whistling wind. 

At last the wolf's growl died away. Lith spoke one last phrase and then too went quiet. The wolf's head dipped side to side, and then, to Aragorn's surprise, she let out one short bark, then turned and trotted away into the mist. She was gone.

Lith swayed. Then he dropped the sword and slumped down onto one knee. Aragorn scrambled up to his feet and darted for the weapon, snatching it up, heart racing. He stared into the fog.

'You will not need that,' said the Elf, sounding unutterably weary. 'The wolf - she is gone.'

'What happened?' said Aragorn, glancing back from the direction the wolf had disappeared. 'What did you do?' 

Lith remained kneeling in the grass, curling forward. 'An old spell,' he murmured. 

'The wolf could have killed us both. Why did she just leave?'

Lith just shook his head. He looked up at Aragorn. 'You are hurt,' he said. 'You are bleeding.'

Aragorn didn’t think he was injured, but he knew well enough how easy it was in the fever of battle to remain blind to a wound until long after the fight was over. He glanced down and sure enough, blood was oozing from the torn holes in the leather of his boot. There was no pain yet, but it would come soon.

'I do not think it is too bad. Are you wounded?'

Lith shivered. He wasn’t bleeding that Aragorn could see but he was hunched forward in that way that was becoming quite familiar, and he didn’t answer the question.

'Your arm?' Aragorn asked. The Elf nodded silently. Aragorn remembered Lith falling to the floor, his arms out to catch his fall, the full weight of the deep-wolf on his back...

The wolf.

Aragorn looked back out into the swirling whiteness. The ground mist was burning away as the sun rose. Even now he could see the shapes of nearby trees appearing through the mirk, but there was no sign of movement, no black wolf shadow leaping for them through the fog. 

'The wolf is truly gone?'

Lith still said nothing and when Aragorn looked towards him he saw the Elf’s face was pale with pain. There was no other choice for now than hope that Lith knew what he was talking about.

'Come,' Aragorn said, limping over to Lith. 'Let us find somewhere safe to rest.'

They would not be able to keep going for long. With the pain from Aragorn’s leg starting to burn, Lith had to support him as they walked, even as the Elf himself swayed with his own pain. Aragorn kept his sword drawn as they walked, but the wolf did not reappear. 

It was more than fortunate that they stumbled on a place to camp not half an hour later. It was not a cave, more a long crack in the rock of an escarpment. It went back only a dozen paces and above them was open to the air, but it was sheltered, would conceal a fire, and more importantly had but one entrance which would limit angles of attack. As soon as the fire was burning merrily and the water in his small cauldron was hot, they did what they could to treat Aragorn's leg wound. Even though the tough leather of his boot had taken the worst of the damage, as soon as Aragorn pulled his boot off, the blood began to stream out afresh from the arcs of deep punctures encircling his calf. Aragorn used up the last of the soapcake to wash out the wound; soap would break down any saliva in the cuts better than anything and was the only way to try and stave off infection. Lith did his best to aid with the bandages, although his left hand was useless and the right shaking badly. Aragorn stuck to his resolve not to interfere and said nothing when Lith openly took a pinch of pain-bite as soon as Aragorn’s wound was dressed. Right now he clearly needed it.

They were both exhausted but Aragorn knew it would be far too dangerous for both of them to sleep at once, particularly as it had turned out Lith’s crossbow had been another casualty of the wolf’s most recent attack. When the wolf had knocked the Elf to the ground, one arm of the lathe had snapped clean through and now the weapon was all but useless. Lith had gathered up the broken pieces and stowed them away in his pack without a word. If he was left feeling bereft and vulnerable with no weapon but his unwieldy heavy knife he gave no sign, and still seemed sure that they needed to fear no further attack from the wolf. Aragorn wanted to know how the Elf could be so certain. 

'She agreed to my bargain,' Lith said. 

They were sitting by the fire. Aragorn had his bound leg raised up on his pack and it was throbbing unpleasantly. The Elf was holding his own injured arm tight against his torso. Aragorn had treated it again with the soothing salve, but the scar had been swollen, red and angry to look at, worse than it had been back in Tandoliant. Lith seemed barely to be able to close his left hand now without pain.

'What bargain?' Aragorn frowned. 'Before you spoke of a spell.'

'Spell, curse, bargain. It is much the same.' Lith answered, quietly, and then expanded only when Aragorn gave him an impatient look. 'I told her that we had knives of sharp steel. She might kill one but not both of us, then the other would kill her. I warned her to leave us for easier prey. She accepted.'

'You don’t think the wolf will just come back when we’re asleep?'

'No. She was driven by hunger only. A creature of evil intent - a warg - would not have understood the tongue. No such was she. She will leave us in peace.'

Aragorn frowned. 'But how can you know what an animal understands? What tongue can talk to the mind of a wolf?'

'I cannot tell you,' Lith said, without a pause. 'It is forbidden for _Bodadêldir_ to--'

'That is not good enough!' Aragorn interrupted, sternly. He was growing frustrated with the constant secrets. 'Our lives depend on this, that the wolf really is gone. I must know if I can put my trust in this, in _you_. Tell me!'

Lith was silent for a long time. At last he spoke.

'It was Old Nandorin. That tongue...it is ancient. Powerful. I am forbidden to use it, and did so only to save yo-- _our_ lives. Speaking it again...it was…'

Lith’s voice trailed away. Aragorn nodded, slowly. He had known already that the Elf must be one of the Silvan folk from his accent but this new development told him more than perhaps Lith had hoped it would. Aragorn knew less about the Silvan Elves than he did the Ñoldor, Sindar or even the Galadhrim, but he knew enough to be aware the Old Nandorin dialects were all but extinct, and that the wild magic he had just witnessed was a rare gift even amongst that people. Lith must come from a powerful Silvan bloodline with deep Mirkwood roots. Flaxen and golden hair was more common amongst those of Silvan blood, as was Lith's slender build, but he was a little taller than Aragorn thought common for Wood-elves and no Silvan had eyes of that blue-grey colour; their eyes were brown like pine bark or hazelnuts, or green like sunlight through leaves. Sea eyes were the mark of a Sinda. Deeper still this mystery grew, but there were few places now in Middle-earth where those two peoples were so intertwined. 

'I am right in my guess then,' Aragorn said softly, 'that you are a Wood-elf and that you hail from Mirkwood?'

'No,' disagreed Lith, abruptly. His face went blank as that old mask covered his features once more. 'I am not. I am _nothing_.'

Aragorn frowned. 'You must stop saying such things. Whether your people choose to cast you out or not, it does not change who you are. Your heritage. No punishment can erase that.'

'Do not speak of what you do not understand!' Lith was angrier now than Aragorn thought he had yet seen. 'They exiled me, but why can you not see that I deserved it? I am not worthy to be what I was before. I do not want to be! I forfeited all else when I--'

He cut off abruptly. 

'When you killed another Elf?' Aragorn said, perhaps a little too ruthlessly, but hoping to prompt another truth.

Lith blanched but he said, very quietly, 'Yes.' Then he turned away, his countenance miserable. 'Please, just leave me alone. I do not wish to speak any more.'

After that, nothing else would persuade Lith to respond again and they lapsed into silence while they ate and unrolled their blankets. Weariness won out over caution in the end and they both slept; it was full morning now and they would not be troubled by night-dwelling goblins or wargs, and there was nothing Aragorn could do but accept the Elf’s confidence in his Nandorin spellwork to keep the she-wolf at bay. On the edge of awareness he sensed Lith tossing and turning for some time before the Elf succumbed to sleep. Aragorn too fell asleep soon after, exhausted by the missing nights of rest, the long days of travel, and the lingering chill and tightness in his chest that he prayed was not an oncoming illness. 

No such luck. Aragorn woke in the late afternoon, sneezing, as the sun sank towards the western horizon far, far away. They had slept away almost all of the day and it was far past time to be moving on if they wanted to reach Rivendell before the snows of winter set in. In between coughing and shivering, the man repacked their belongings, smothered the last hot embers of the fire and ate a little bread, and all the while Lith slept on, still and silent beneath his thin blanket. And when Aragorn finally grew impatient and went to wake the Elf, he found to growing consternation that he could not. Neither calling nor shaking produced a reaction, and when he laid his fingers on the Elf’s pulse, his skin was chilled and the rhythm of his heartbeat too slow within his chest. His breaths seemed shallow and barely perceptible, and when Aragorn peeled open Lith’s eyelids, he saw the black centres had all but swallowed up the blue.

Crumpled in the Elf's lax right hand was the waxed parchment wrap that contained the dried _naegranaeth_. More than a third of the herb was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An Elvish year (în) of 144 solar years long is from LoTR Appendix D, but I completely made up that Elvish coming of age occurs at eight în (1152 years) because I like it that way. I'll probably expand more on Lith's age in a separate note at the end of the work. I have also Taken Liberties (TM) with languages and Silvan elves in general. This situation is highly unlikely to improve any time soon.
> 
> Thank you again readers, kudos-leavers and commenters! Your enjoyment is food and drink to me. Part two of the series is well underway; it was going to be a brief one-shot epilogue but is now a full seven chapters in its own right. C'est la vie...


	6. 24th November 3018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The events of the previous day take their toll, as Lith and Aragorn struggle on towards Rivendell. Lith makes a life-changing decision. They encounter another surprise in the woods.

### 24th November 3018

Lith dreamed, but it was as far from the clear and pure remembrance of Elven reverie as any sleep could be. Faces of those known and unknown, loved and reviled, swam past him, stretched into grimaces of agony; he heard snatches of strange song, twisted and discordant, and thick fumes seemed to cloud his senses. His nose and throat were filled with a smoke of blood and ashes, and he wondered if somewhere a fire burned. His skin crawled over his bones.

He heard words carried on the wind but they fractured and fell apart before he could make sense of them, as if they were spoken in some ancient forgotten tongue shaken loose into the violence of a storm. Lith had lost himself in the forests before, talking to none but the trees for so long that when he had walked beneath the open sky again he could scarce recall how the language of words worked. Now he could but watch, bewildered and helpless, as a thousand mouths cracked open all around him, speaking words he knew not but in tones that were all too familiar to him; mocking, condemning, hating, like hot coals tumbling out from their tongues to burn into his heart. He endured it all. What choice was there? They threw curses like stones, tore the braids from his hair, and he fled. Nowhere was far enough. He ran and ran, and then when he could no longer run, he crawled, crawled into the solitary dark. His breath came fast; his pulse beat inside his head, a pounding war drum. His fingers felt around blindly for a weapon.

Sometimes in his dreams he remembered what it had been like to wield a bow, a real bow. The way the white yew flexed as his shoulders drew back, the tension and hum of the string beneath his fingers, the whisper of the arrow...He thought once he had been proud of his skill, back when he still knew what it was to have pride. That was why they had taken it away, of course. It was gone now, and so too was his crossbow, that pale substitute. Lith had felt it crack beneath him as he fell; he had hoped the sound was a rib breaking but unfortunately the bow took the injury, and unlike his bones that would not heal. It might be many moons before he could gather the materials he would need to make repairs and he was defenseless without it. Useless. Nameless. What noble titles to bear.

In that void of darkness, his searching hand found a knife. _The_ knife. It had been a long time, so long, but he remembered the feel of that too, even more precisely than his longbow. Strange that this he should remember even when so much else about that night was obscured in a haze of terror and shock. The knife was light, perfectly balanced. The inlaid ivory had felt warm to the touch, and his bruised and split fingers had stung as his hand had tightened on the hilt. He did not remember the sight of it his grip or indeed any sight of his eyes, and he did not recall what he heard or smelled or felt in his heart, but he did know the way that the cloth and skin had resisted the blade at first, before finally both split apart and the blade slid so easily into the flesh beneath. It had been such a simple thing. Really, there had not even been much blood until the fourth or fifth stab. 

Those had been the last moments of Lith's life when he had not had blood on his hands.

When they had marked him, slashed his face and cut open his arm, over and over, day after day, the guard assigned to the task had wept. That had been the strangest thing. Even in the courtroom, standing before the throne, his ears ringing and ringing - he could scarce hear any words that were being spoken over the peel of that frantic bell in his mind - even then he had seen faces in that frenzied crowd that had looked on him not with disgust but with grief. He had wondered afterwards if, behind that ringing bell that had deafened his ears, if any of them had tried to speak to him. If any had tried to come to his defence. But it hardly mattered now.

His stomach twisted, nauseated. The white knife was gone, destroyed years and years ago, and now the voices and the faces too swirled and collided, and then flowed away like ink on wet paper. He thought perhaps he wept too at their loss, for at least their loathing and scorn had meant he was not alone. As they flowed away he saw that one face lingered last, the face he always looked for in the dark. The first he had ever seen in this world and had seen but once and never again. She called out to him, the only word he understood.

_Legolas!_

And then his mother too was gone, and he was utterly alone.

* * *

Lith came slowly back to awareness of the world around. His body felt unbearably heavy, as if river stones were strapped to each limb and weighed him to the ground. As if uncaring of the impediments, hands were clawing at him, shaking him, roughly.

'Lith. Awake! You have slept long enough. It is time to wake up.'

 _Legolas._ His name was...

A sting to his face, muted and distant. The unrelenting ache in his arm was dull, barely perceptible. This weighted, heavy painlessness...this is where he wished to stay, hidden away in numbness. Why could he not stay?

'Lith,' The voice said, sternly. 'You will wake, and you open your eyes. Right _now_.'

Such was the undeniable command in that tone that Lith found himself unable to do anything but obey. He felt his eyelids fluttering, erratic against the searing firelight, but he could not open them more. 

'That’s not good enough, Lith. _Wake up_.'

He was shaken again, and then hands on his shoulders hauled him up to sitting. Lith's head fell forward, heavy and unwieldy on his own neck. A hand on his back held up him, but his mind still started to drift away. 

Another sharper _crack,_ his face stinging and eyes fluttered open at last. At first Lith saw nothing but darkness and the flicker of firelight. Then a face, another face, loomed in, but this one he knew or thought he knew. A man, dark haired and bearded, with a noble face now drawn with fatigue and fear. But the grey eyes were sharp as a forged steel arrowhead and they drew him in deep and inexorable, until he was lost in their wisdom, their strength and their clear, unfettered purpose. Lith knew then, even while the rest of the world was lost in an uncertain haze, that he would follow this man anywhere.

Fingers snapped before his vision.

'Speak!' ordered the man in his rough voice. 'Give me some sign that you can hear me.'

 _'I will obey thee, my king, in all things,'_ Lith murmured, his tongue heavy in his mouth, words slurring _. 'Command unto me any duty and it will be done.'_

'Lith! I do not understand the Silvan tongue so that does little to reassure me your wits are intact. I need you to speak in Sindarin.'

 _'I do not know how,'_ he said, and tried to turn his face away from that regal gaze in his shame. Someone held his head still.

'Your mind is scrambled by the pain-bite. Repeat my words until you remember yourself again. 'My name is Lith, and this tongue is Sindarin. I am a damn fool who just scared my friend half to death.''

'My name is...I am Lith. I remember,' Lith said, at last. 'I remember. Sindarin.'

The man nodded at last, and asked, 'Do you remember me? What is _my_ name, Lith?'

Lith did not answer. The heaviness was weighing down his eyes and drawing his mind back into darkness. 

'No, you must not sleep again!' said the man. His voice rang with alarm, and though Lith could not reply, the man started to stand up.

'Up with you; we will walk this off together.'

The man gripped him under the arms and Lith felt his body being hauled up from the ground. His legs buckled but a broad shoulder under his arm held him up and there was an arm around his waist. He was sick onto the ground at their feet. The man pulled him on; his feet stumbled and he almost fell. But after a moment his legs did their part and he managed at last to lurch one step, then another and another as the man dragged him on. They staggered on together until the path ahead was blocked with stone, dim and unclear before his eyes.

'Good,' said the man, and he turned them around and they limped back through the clinging gloom of night towards the fire. A half-dozen places beyond and the cliffs peeled away so they turned again, walking back into the crack in the cliff face. He vomited again.

Lith wanted to fall to the floor. He wanted to sleep, he wanted just to _cease_ , but the man that dragged him on would not let him and together they put one limping step before another, back and forth between the narrow stone walls, pacing the length of the narrow canyon over and over. Slowly, slowly Lith felt the weight in his limbs, the crushing heaviness in his heart and lungs begin to lift as sickness loosened its hold. Then the pain began to return.

And all the while the man talked to him. A low constant murmur of encouragement and hope that drove him on, shuffling his feet as his body struggled and his mind buzzed. The man never paused, even though he was also limping, and coughed several times.

At length Lith remembered he had been asked a question, and the answer lit up brightly in his mind.

'Aragorn,' he said. 'You are Aragorn, from Imladris. Your father was Arathorn of the Dúnedain. You are a friend of Mithrandir.' But Aragorn had called Lith his friend too, as if it was as easy as speaking, as if he had no idea what that word would do to Lith’s heart and to his desperate hopes. 

'Good, that's good,' said Aragorn, completely innocent of the turmoil in Lith’s thoughts, of the dazed wonder and the numbing terror warring in his heart. 'Your mind returns and your legs are steadier. I think it is wearing off. Soon we can stop, and then you must eat, and drink water.'

'I cannot--' Lith murmured, but Aragorn interrupted. 

'You are still nauseous, no doubt. But the herb is more potent when your body is empty of nourishment. You will burn it faster when you have something to digest.'

The man's tone brooked no argument and Lith was too exhausted, shocked and numb to form one. They sat by the fire and Aragorn made him swallow a bowl of watery broth followed by a tea of water-mint, lemon balm and fennel when sickness threatened to return the broth soon after. Then they both wrapped themselves in their blankets and Lith felt sleep take him once more.

He woke to the sound of coughing. It was nearly dawn and the eastern sky was pale and grey; he had slept the whole night. Frost had settled and lay thickly on their packs, glittering off the fallen leaves that gathered around the foot of the cliffs. When Lith rolled his head he saw Aragorn was awake, sitting hunched forward. He coughed hard, and then saw Lith awake and quickly came to his side.

'Lith. You are awake at last. How do you feel?' 

Lith sat up, carefully. He was wrapped in his own blanket and coat. His senses felt dull and oddly far away, his head ached and his heart felt strange in his chest. But the nausea was less and his hands did not tremble. The pain in his arm was a constant low throb like a living thing with a heartbeat of its own.

'I do not know how I feel,' he said, carefully.

'Well, that is not unexpected,' Aragorn said with a sigh. His voice sounded odd, rather raspy, but not scathing or angry. 'Your body has been through quite the ordeal. But I have stew and bread here that you should eat.'

They ate the food Aragorn had prepared in silence, listening to the fire crackle. Lith could not have said what it was they ate. His head and limbs felt both light and weighed down all at once. Nausea still curled in his belly. He wondered how long he had been sick. 

'It is November the 24th,' said Aragorn in response to the question he had not meant to ask. Lith just looked at him, blankly.

'We are four days from Imladris. We arrived here yesterday morning,' Aragorn explained, seeming to realise Lith had only the vaguest context for the date; such measurements of time meant little out in the wild where only the turn of the seasons mattered. 'You have been...unwell since noon yesterday. The worst is passed now; I think you will not suffer any longer term effects once your strength returns.'

Lith ignored the latter statement; the guilt for his foolishness was already curdling with the sickness in his gut. 'What happened to your voice?' Lith asked instead. The man’s voice, while usually rough to an Elf’s ears, seemed even coarser that morning.

Aragorn gave a short cough. 'Oh, nothing,' he said. 'Just a chill in my throat. It will pass.'

'You are coughing also,' Lith pointed out.

'It is nothing,' said Aragorn again, a little more firmly. He looked tired and so Lith asked nothing further. It was not difficult, even for one as out of touch with reading another’s moods as he, to sense Aragorn was angry. Though the man did not say so, it was not a stretch of imagination to suppose Aragorn must be unhappy with the delay Lith’s weakness had cost them. Lith determined to himself that he would do nothing that might hinder Aragorn's journey further. 

As soon as they both had eaten and Aragorn had insisted on carefully binding Lith’s crippled arm to his chest with a sling, they packed up their belongings quickly and set off again. Lith thought that the Ranger must have scouted the area around the camp while he had been insensible, as the man set off confidently further into the hills, seeming sure of their direction even though the sun was shaded behind grey cloud. 

Though they had left the wetlands behind and were now well into the foothills of the Hithaeglir, the ground was still boggy in places where the streams and rainwater had gathered in hollows and the odd flight of geese or swans still passed overhead. The wind swirled chill around the hollows in the hills, catching at their coats and hair. At first they walked swiftly, although after an hour or two Aragorn’s pace soon began to slow. Lith did not think his own bouts of lightheadedness had been obvious, so it was probably more to do with Aragorn’s coughing fits, or the injured leg which was noticeably unbalancing the man’s gait. The Ranger had made some repairs to his boot during the night, stitching and patching up the tears but Lith could see hints of white beneath where the wolf bite was dressed. It must surely be painful to walk on.

By mid morning they had wound their way along several grassy hills and had seen glimpses of the distant river again off to their left before they entered a long, narrow band of sparse woodland; young silver birches and lively rowans, and the occasional twisted willow, sleepy and mellow. It did not rain again, but the sky remained overcast and a chill wind came down from the north. Lith found a fresh, windfelled branch from a sturdy mountain ash and, with a few quick passes of his knife, shaped a light walking staff. He presented it to Aragorn. 

'Here. For your leg.'

It was the first words either of them had spoken for a while. Aragorn took the staff with a grateful nod of his head. He took a few testing steps and seemed to find the support agreeable. 

'My thanks.'

Lith lingered behind for a moment as the man limped on. 'I am sorry,' Lith said suddenly, though he had not meant to. 

Aragorn paused, glancing back. He asked nothing but his face was open and Lith felt emboldened to continue.

'I am sorry that I was the cause of delay.'

From inside his hood, Aragorn frowned. 

'The wolf caused our delay,' he said, and coughed a little.

'Still. I regret that you have now lost two days of your travel time due me, particularly as I cannot be of use now.'

'What are you speaking of?'

'You asked for aid on your journey, but my arm...and with my bow broken I cannot defend you,' Lith explained, wondering if the man’s illness was worse than he thought. Aragorn did not seem to be following. 'I assumed yesterday that you would simply leave me and go on.' 

As soon as he had spoken Lith sensed he had somehow misjudged the source of Aragorn’s anger.

'The need for haste would have to be great indeed for me to abandon any other alone in the wilderness,' Aragorn said, pointedly. 'Let alone a friend and one who was unwell besides. Do you still think me so heartless?' 

Lith felt himself flinch unintentionally as Aragorn said _friend_ again, and looked away. He knew he did not articulate himself well.

'I did not mean to imply…' Lith began, and then changed course. 'That is, I have never met anyone so full of good heart. I just...I find I am again in your debt.' 

'Cease to concern yourself with it for I do not wish to be owed debts,' Aragorn replied. 'I would rather you told me what possessed you to take such a quantity of pain-bite; you speak words of apology and yet you continue to put yourself at risk. You know I am a healer, and would aid you if you would just ask!'

There was quiet for a time but Lith had no answer to that, for he did not think he truly knew himself.

Aragorn was not appeased by his silence. ‘Did you intend to take your own life?’ he asked, directly.

‘No!’ Lith said quickly, looking away across the valley. ‘No. It was the pain, that was all. It was very bad. I made an error.’

It was not wholly untrue. The pain from his arm, where the weight of the wolf had impacted had been overwhelming, but if he was honest with himself Lith knew that his old wound was not the sole cause of distress. Aragorn’s trust and compassion had seeped through the carefully structured defences around Lith's heart and mind like water through cracked stone, and now the breach was forced open and the torrent threatened to drown him. The things he had thought and spoken of in the past few days, stirred up again in his mind all that had been allowed to settle to stillness...It was too much. Between Mithrandir, Luinmeord, Elrond and Aragorn, friendship and family and _belonging_ had all been dangled before Lith like the lure in a snare and he knew in just a few days it would all be snatched away again, and he would return to his fierce isolation. Though he knew now to expect it, the loss of those foolish hopes will still be a bitter draught to swallow. And underlying the turmoil and grief of his heart had been the blaze of pain in his arm and all the memories his scars embodied. In that moment, sitting in the cold light of day beside Aragorn’s bloody and exhausted form, it had been just _too much._ But still Aragorn had stayed. He had not abandoned his unintentional burden, even as helpless, crippled and unwelcome as Lith no doubt was, even though he was holding Aragorn back in his race towards that vital and urgent destiny that held the fate of the world in the balance. He had stayed with Lith, feeding him, coaxing him back to life. He again had called Lith _friend_. 

And in just four days they would reach the borders of Imladris, and Aragorn too would be gone from him forever. The thought of it frightened Lith beyond words.

He had made his decision in that moment, but it took him the rest of the day’s march to build up the courage to act on it. Aragorn had just suggested looking out for a campsite when Lith stopped, spontaneously. Aragorn almost walked into his back, then froze.

'What is wrong?' he said, low, looking around at the dusky grasslands. 'Is the wolf returned?' 

Lith ignored the question. He swung his pack down, darted a hand into the pocket, and pulled something out. He held his closed fist out towards Aragorn but did not look at him. 

'What is this?' Aragorn said, carefully neutral.

'Take it,' Lith said. 'Please.'

Aragorn reached out and took the pouch, with its waxed parchment wrap of pain-bite, from his hand. 'Why do you give this to me?'

Lith breathed deeply, looking down at his hands. 'I do not want last night to happen again, but I do not know how to prevent it. There is...The pain grows worse and all I can think of is the pain-bite, of relief…I tried to get rid of the herb but I find I cannot. Please help me. Hide it, burn it, throw it away. Anything.'

Aragorn was very quiet, and Lith was afraid he had made another misstep by asking this, by revealing his weakness. He carefully raised his head, just a little, so he could see Aragorn’s face. The man’s expression was unreadable. 

'You ask for my help?'

Lith nodded, and then hesitated. 'Unless you do not want to--'

'No, no - I will aid you, Lith, of course I will. All you ever needed to do was ask. But I do not think we should destroy the herb. I believe your body has become dependent on it, and though I do not know much about _naegranaeth_ , to stop taking it all at once could be dangerous for your heart. I will keep the rest of the herb and, if you are in agreement, I will give you a dose each evening that I judge, as a healer, to be appropriate. It will not be as much as you are used to, and I will decrease the amount over time to reduce your dependency. You will face some uncomfortable symptoms. But I will never give you more than I deem safe. Do you agree?'

'Yes. I agree,' Lith said, and was surprised when Aragorn suddenly stepped close, putting his broad palm onto Lith’s shoulder and giving a reassuring squeeze. He looked up into the man’s face, into those grey eyes that he had seen in noble contemplation, or steely cold, or flashing with stormy anger. Now they were soft and earnest.

'I am pleased you have asked for this,' Aragorn said, gravely, 'and I am honoured that you put your trust in me; I know it cannot be an easy thing to do. I swear I will do all I can to help you.'

Lith nodded, wordlessly, and Aragorn hid the pouch away into his coat out of sight. The release of tension as the medicine passed beyond his reach left Lith feeling like he might weep. He had surrendered control of his pain, his peace of mind and maybe his life too up to a man he still barely knew. Not so long ago such a thing would have seemed inconceivable. But there was something different about this Aragorn.

When they made camp that night, true to his word, Aragorn separated out a small dose of pain-bite no larger than Lith’s thumbnail and stirred it carefully into a water cup. Though dismayed by the quantity and knowing it would make little inroads on his pain, Lith swallowed the medicine without a word. He took the watch all night, for Aragorn needed the rest, and the constant unrelenting throb of pain in his arm, headache, and churn of nausea in his belly would have never let Lith sleep. He paced, anxious and shaky, until dawn. 

Two more days passed by in the same manner. The terrain steepened and grew harder and rockier as the mountains marched closer, and the travellers wound their way towards the Hidden Valley. They were nearing the end of November now and the days had a chill bite of mountain wind, though in the afternoons the sun broke free of the clouds, sending touches of warmth and autumnal light across the last clinging leaves in the scattered woodlands. All around nature grew quiet and sleepy as the cold crept in. At night they camped in low hollows in the hills and lay close to the fire for warmth. Lith slept not at all, tormented by sickness, the shaking of his limbs, an aching head and the pain in his old scars that the small doses Aragorn gave seemed to do nothing to dispel. Unfortunately, as the days passed, it became clear that Aragorn was little better off himself. While the wound in his leg and shoulder seemed to be healing well enough, the illness the man had been holding at bay for nearly a week since the rains ended finally took full possession. The morning after Lith had given up the pain-bite to Aragorn’s keeping, the man woke in a fit of hacking coughs that gradually increased in frequency and severity over the course of the day, until by the evening even his normal breaths came with a wheeze that did not need Elven senses to hear. Aragorn sneezed and coughed and shivered as they walked and Lith insisted the man take Lith's own blanket too for sleeping, although it did not seem to make much difference. 

They had spent a night camped in the pine woods south of the boundary of Imladris when Aragorn woke with a fever. The cough had shown little improvement over the days and the previous night had been sleepless for both travellers. Lith knew little of mortal illness and could only watch over the man anxiously as he tossed and turned, coughing up mouthfuls of yellow substance with a sound that crackled deep into his chest. Aragorn had explained the previous day that those signs showed his lungs were infected, but waking now to fever, with face pale and blotchy and his eyes too bright was a new and worrisome concern. At Aragorn’s direction Lith had brewed teas of licorice root and white willow which would aid the cough, but Aragorn had only carried a little of the ingredients with him and it was now gone. He could still walk and guide them to their destination, he assured Lith somewhat irritably, but the Elf still felt concerned. In his current condition, the man was barely in a fit state to care for himself. While he had so far managed to distribute Lith’s pain-bite every evening there was no telling l how long that would last. And attack was another concern; with Lith weaponless and Aragorn sickening they would be all too vulnerable if they were to be set upon on the road. Lith had once been a competent warrior, and he could defend himself with his knife or Aragorn’s sword if needed. But he also was in pain and with only one functioning hand, and now needing to defend Aragorn also...well, not all dangers would be turned aside by Nandorin spellwords. They would be hard pressed in a fight. And they were still perhaps two days’ from the Last Homely House at their current pace; more if Aragorn worsened. 

And worsen he did. He was not quite delirious and his fever held steady, but it was clear that the Ranger was most unwell. Lith strapped Aragorn’s pack and bedroll to his own but even unburdened Aragorn stumbled and weaved as Lith guided his every step through the woods.

They were traversing through a narrow cleft between two stands of thick pines when suddenly they crossed the boundary of the lands of Imladris. There were no standing stones or hedgerows that marked the border, but to Lith the sensation of stepping into Elven land was unmistakable. It felt like falling into cool water after dying of thirst, or unstopping deafened ears and hearing the first notes of a familiar song. It was breathing in the sweet scent of spring sap in the air after the perpetual white of winter, or looking up and seeing the first evening stars light up in the endless velvet of the sky. It felt like coming home. 

Lith froze for a moment, fear outweighing all other concerns and instincts. He was forbidden here. He should not be entering this land, however sweet and inviting it seemed. That sensation of belonging was not for him. For a creature like Lith there was no home, and never would be again. He had agreed to take Aragorn to the borders and no further, and that he had done. He had to leave before he brought more pain and trouble down on all their heads. Didn't he?

Aragorn, who was leaning on Lith’s arm, raised his head at the sudden pause, though Lith did not think he sensed the Elvish border as Lith did.

'What’s wrong?' Aragorn rasped, and began coughing again. 

'It is nothing,' Lith said, shortly. He carefully supported Aragorn until the fit passed, and then they stepped together across the border and entered the realm of Imladris. Lith could not abandon Aragorn here. They were still a day from the House after all, and what if Aragorn collapsed and Elrond’s people did not find him in time?

Not long after, a different fear came manifest. Despite being distracted by the sick man in his charge and by his own familiar pain, Lith ever had an ear for the language of the forest, for the speech of birds in particular, and a redwing flitting past sang of something it has seen; a creature moving through the trees, perhaps half a league away. Something large, and it was not an Elf.

Lith settled the barely aware Aragorn down at the foot of a great spruce, deep in a bed of dry needles. He hid their packs, put the man’s drawn sword near his hand, and went to investigate the source of the sound alone. In times long past he would have taken to the trees to scout such a sighting. The pines here were strong and kindly, and grew broad branches close to their neighbours; a perfect roadway for a Wood-elf. But the days where he considered himself one of that people were long gone, and with his arm as it was he would be hard pressed to move at ease through the canopy, let alone in silence. So he sped on foot away from Aragorn’s coughing and in the direction the redwing had come from, only taking to the trees as he heard movement close at hand. 

He crouched on a branch, deep amid the concealing pine needles, and he watched and waited, listening to the trees. The evergreens around did not seem alarmed, and so Lith did not think he was dealing with a creature of evil, such as a wraith or goblin—the borders of Imladris were clearly guarded by something more powerful than swords and arrows, and he doubted any would be able to breach the confounds of this land alone and survive. He listened again. The creature was too loud to be an Elf, and did not move like a horse. Probably it was no more than a deer or one of the small black bears which sometimes lived in the mountain foothills. It was possible that this was a Ranger or other mannish inhabitant from Imladris, in which case Lith could lead them back to Aragorn. They could take him safely home.

The figure, when it appeared, was none of those, although Lith waited, silent and motionless in the tree to be certain of what he saw before he moved. Striding his way through the forest was an old man with a staff. He wore big black boots, a grey cloak and robe with a silver scarf and a great grey hat. Mithrandir came within a dozen paces of Lith’s tree before he stopped, suddenly, and looked around. 

'Well, well,' he announced aloud in Sindarin. 'Perhaps you’d like to stop scampering around in the treetops like a squirrel, elfling, and come down here to greet me. I know you are there and I am not inclined to clamber up after you.'

Lith did not intend to deny the request, although in fact he was too surprised to see the wizard appear so fortuitously right where he was needed to consider how Mithrandir had detected him. Lith dropped down out of the tree onto the path, and the wizard turned at the sudden, silent movement. He gave Lith a look that seemed both annoyed and amused. 

'You did not bid Bilbo goodbye when you left,' Mithrandir said, with an irritability that was likely feigned. 'He was most put out. As, I should point out, was I.'

'I did not mean offence,' Lith said. 

'I know,' Mithrandir said, and then sighed. 'Still, I am glad, although admittedly surprised to find you still here. I thought after that ugly business with the Mirkwood envoy you would have disappeared into the empty lands and I should not cross paths with you again for another decade or so.' While the wizard had been speaking, his quick glance had taken in Lith’s arm where it was strapped close to his chest, and the remnant bruises on his face from the misadventure at the river.

'That was my intent,' Lith said, 'but I encountered a friend of yours in the Swanfleet. Now I am guiding him back to Imladris.'

'Which friend would that be?'

'The Ranger, Aragorn,' Lith said. 'He is unwell and I know nothing of mortal sicknesses.'

Mithrandir’s bushy eyebrows both shot up. 'That is unfortunate news though not entirely unexpected. Well, you had better take me to him. How far?'

'I left him in the watch of an old spruce after I heard you approaching. I was not sure if you were friend or foe.'

Lith led the wizard at his slower pace back through the weave of trees that stretched down the hillside until he came to the tree where he had left the Ranger. Aragorn seemed to have fallen asleep, leaning back against the bark. The tree had protected him well, cradling him in its dry boughs. Lith thanked it with a brush of his hand over the trunk. 

'Well, this is quite the mess you have gotten yourself in,' Mithrandir grumbled to the Ranger as he looked the sleeping man over. Then he knelt and put his hand over Aragorn’s forehead. Aragorn woke with a gasp that quickly became a bout of wet, heavy coughing. Mithrandir produced a little silver flask and helped the man to sip until the coughs subsided.

'Gandalf!' Aragorn rasped, sitting up straighter. 'This is a fine chance.'

'It would be, if chance it was,' Mithrandir said, eyes twinkling. 'In truth it was no chance at all but design; I had a feeling that I was needed hereabouts which is why I have been wandering so far from the comforts of Elrond’s house for the past two days with an eye open for trouble. But it seems you two have encountered some trouble of your own.'

'Indeed, but be assured it is nothing that bears on our current concerns,' Aragorn said, and Lith realised he was speaking of the Enemy’s ring and the Council’s great plans. Lith turned away, unwilling to be thought eavesdropping on their secret endeavours. Aragorn perhaps noticed the movement because he added, 'But this is no place to speak of that,' and started to rise. Both wizard and Elf had to aid him to stand as lightheadedness seemed to strike and the man shivered and then coughed hard again. Once on his feet he looked around as if suddenly bewildered by his surroundings.

'Come,' said the wizard. 'If you didn’t know you are fifteen miles from the house as the wolf runs. Usually I think we would all press on through the evening and night to reach the vale sooner, but you both look rather the worse for wear and within these borders we need have no fear of any enemy; not yet at any rate. Let us find somewhere suitable to camp and you can tell me how you found each other in the Wild and what has Aragorn limping like a lamed mare.'

Lith found them a suitable campsite not long after, and a much better one than they had become accustomed over the last few days; a shallow dell at the foot of a short escarpment that kept the chill east wind off their backs, all surrounded by thick, fragrant evergreens. Aragorn all but collapsed onto the leaf mould when they lowered him down and hunched shivering and sneezing, clearly much more unwell than he was trying to seem. Mithrandir, fortunately, looked only mildly concerned and a little amused by Aragorn’s illness, which set Lith’s mind at rest. If the man was likely to die of this then Mithrandir surely would have insisted they press on to Elrond's house. 

Lith left Mithrandir seeing to the fire, and tracked the scent and song of water rising from beneath the earth until he found a stream. Following a short way along its banks brought him to a series of low, broad falls ending in a wide pool. It was an easy half an hour’s work to tickle two large sleepy trout from the icy mountain water, and then, following his nose and a whisper from the trees, he soon located a patch of golden honey-mushrooms. When added to the handfuls of sweet chestnuts he had foraged a few days before in the lowlands it would make a fine meal. 

When he arrived back at the campsite, Mithrandir and Aragorn were deep in conversation. Lith did not wish to interrupt and so paused at the edge of the firelight. Aragorn broke off speaking to cough and then saw Lith standing in the shadows. The wizard looked up with a smile. 

'Ah, there you are,' Mithrandir said. 'We wondered where you had slipped off to.'

Lith realised with surprise that both of them bore looks of relief at his return. They had thought he had left them for good. The Elf held up the two gutted fish in explanation and then crouched silently down by the fire to spit them for cooking, leaving the others to their conversation. Though he was growing comfortable with Aragorn and Mithrandir separately, the two at once was an unknown quantity.

Aragorn and Mithrandir continued to speak for a while in low voices about things that did not concern the Elf, such as the goings on in Elrond's house, the doings of Dwarves and the news of scouts, until coughing left the man too breathless to talk. While Aragorn sipped his waterskin and recovered, the wizard turned his beady eyes on Lith instead. 

'And what brings you back to Imladris, my lad?'

'Aragorn asked for my assistance on the road,' Lith said. 'As I have told you.'

'Indeed,' said Mithrandir. 'From what Aragorn tells me, what with battling floods and deep-wolves and saving the innocent it seems the pair of you make quite formidable company.'

Lith had nothing to say to that and so he did not answer. Instead he tipped out the mushrooms he had gathered, intending to slice them up while the water boiled, but it was almost a full night and day since his last dose of pain-bite and his hands were shaking terribly. As usual the wizard noticed and decided to meddle.

'Here. You seem to be having some trouble.' Mithrandir gently nudged Lith aside and reached for the knife. On edge and nervous, Lith darted his hand away from the wizard's and quickly skittered away. He settled on the far side of the fire, and turned his attention to the heating water instead. 

'I have heard what happened to Aragorn's leg,' Mithrandir continued, as he took over the food preparation. 'But I am yet to hear of what troubles your arm. An Elf conceding to wearing a sling is no common sight.'

All day Lith’s arm had been aching with a sick beat that made concentrating on anything difficult. He did not even want to think on it further, let alone discuss it. Not when it was still at least two hours until Aragorn would give him his next dose.

'Did you also receive some injury from the jaws of the brôgaraf?' pressed the wizard. 'Or did you injure yourself during your exploits in the river?'

Lith did not answer, but continued to work on the soothing tea he was preparing for the Ranger, pouring the heated water into a small cup and letting the dried herbs steep. The wizard, meanwhile, was hardly put off by Lith’s continued attempts to ignore his questions. He pointed the knife at Lith, and switched to Lith's native tongue. 

_'Do not attempt that campaign of silence again with me, elfling, for thou has a tongue in thine head, and this time I know thou hast not forgotten how to use it.'_

Lith frowned but before he had to think up a reply Aragorn intervened on his behalf. The Ranger must be familiar enough with the wizard's ways to recognise the tone of voice without understanding the language itself. 

'Lith exacerbated an old wound,' Aragorn rasped. 'While defending me from the wolf. It is stable but needs more care than I can give at present.'

As the pair had obviously discussed their journey while he had been gathering food, Lith had assumed that Aragorn would already have told Mithrandir all else that had occured: Lith’s scars, the pain-bite and all. It was no easy matter to keep things from a wizard and Lith was strangely grateful when he realised that Aragorn had kept in confidence that which he had not even asked the man to honour. Mithrandir knew Lith’s hand troubled him at times, but never had he shared the truth of that shameful wound with any, before Aragorn.

'Then it is fortunate that you happen to have arrived in the perfect place,' Mithrandir replied, with satisfaction. He tossed the mushrooms into the pot with the chestnuts and stirred the mix casually with a stick. 'There is no being in Arda that has studied the healing arts as diligently as Lord Elrond.'

Lith quite was aware that the wizard was still trying to goad him into speech. Annoyed and restless and hurting, he rose and unfolded one of the bedrolls. Aragorn had slumped back against a tree, shivering, and Lith spread his blanket across Aragorn's legs before handing him the tea. The Ranger smiled at him, a little bemusedly.

'Elrond will be pleased to have two new patients,' Mithrandir continued, still sounding mild. 'With Frodo recovering so well he has been most devoid of--'

Lith interrupted, his tone flat. _'I will not come into the valley with thee again.'_

' _Thou hast already crossed the borders of Imladris,'_ the wizard replied, lightning sharp, all mildness gone. _'Thou standest already on Elvish land. Thus the damage has been done.'_ He cast Lith a sharp look. ' _Will thou at least do Lord Elrond the courtesy of speaking with him this time, or will thou come and go again like a thief in the night?'_

Lith shoulders stiffened. His hands shook.

 _'Keeping my distance from Lord Elrond_ is _courtesy,'_ he answered, shortly. The wizard's tongue was indeed sharp tonight; it seemed he must have taken Lith's last hasty departure personally. _'Thou knowest how my presence here brings danger on all who shelter me.'_

' _I know an outdated and unjust law would have it so_ ,' Mithrandir retorted. ' _And I know Elrond would break that law to aid one in need. He has no love for archaic rules and knows well that injustice thrives when those that should see it are wilfully blind. Thou must come with us to the house, and let him tell thee himself if you do not believe me._ ' His voice softened. _'Elfling. Thou cannot spend this eternity of thine out in the cold.’_

 _'I can and I must!'_ Lith snapped, and rounded to meet the wizard’s eye at last. _'I followed thee into Imladris before, at thine insistence. What good did that do? What did that gain me, or thee, or any of us? Nothing!'_

'It gained you a _friend_ ,' the wizard said, gesturing to Aragorn and slipping back into Sindarin no doubt so that the man could follow. 'For you and Aragorn would likely never have met if you had not come to Imladris as I asked before. There is a bond between you already, you know this, and I can see it will only grow stronger.' The wizard raised one bushy eyebrow. 'You need all the friends you can get. And there are the rest of us, Bilbo and I, and others that I could name, Lith. You are not as alone as you think.'

It was around then Aragorn pointed out that, friends or otherwise, the fish was burning, and the conversation was, to Lith’s relief, set aside. 

They ate. The food was good, despite the wizard’s best efforts. Lith caught himself making a mental note of where the mushrooms had been growing, when he remembered that they were within the bounds of Imladris and he would not be returning here again. 

After they had eaten, Mithrandir leaned back against a tree and took out his noisome pipe. While the wizard was distracted, Aragorn took the opportunity to go to his pack to fetch the pain-bite. The first reek of wizard’s pipe-smoke drifted over just as Aragorn handed Lith the water cup containing the solution of herb but if Mithrandir saw anything he for once decided to keep his peace and made no comment. Lith swallowed the dose quickly, but the sight of Aragorn tucking the pouch away in his jerkin had brought the Elf to another realisation. This process—weaning him off the dependency of the pain-bite—it was not over. They would reach Imladris tomorrow and he was little better; his arm was agony, his grip almost nonexistant, and without the herb his hands trembled and he felt constantly sick to his stomach. Lith doubted Aragorn would return the medicine to him now if Lith turned back, and he had no hope of stealing it away while Mithrandir was here. Was Lith to be held hostage by his own weakness once more? Did he dare to see this through?

Oblivious to Lith’s turmoil, Aragorn went to his bedroll soon after, and they heard him coughing and sneezing for some time before his raspy breaths evened out in sleep. The wizard sat near to the fire with his pipe and seemed content just to smoke and think in silence. Lith took to the low branches above the wizard's head, and a sweet golden larch that whispered soft sounds just for him. He pressed his face to the rough bark as he listened. The pain-bite was swirling in his blood, soothing the frantic buzz of his mind, the tremor in his limbs and the constant pulse of pain in his arm. It was also loosening his tongue. 

'Did Bilbo…' Lith said, almost before he had decided to speak. The wizard looked up into the tree, questioningly. Lith continued. 'Was Bilbo truly upset that I left?'

'Yes,' said the wizard, gravely. 'He is a kind soul and very fond of you, you know. But he understands, I think, better than most that sometimes one needs to make a swift, unannounced departure.' 

When he glanced down, Lith saw there was the little twinkle in the wizard’s eye and Lith knew he had been forgiven. He found himself asking, 'And...the other Wood-elves?'

The wizard lowered his pipe. 'What of them?' 

'Are they still here? In Imladris?'

'No,' Mithrandir said, gently. 'They departed the same morning I did on their journey east. Luinmeord thought to stay, but at length chose to return home, to see to their duties.'

'Did he seem…' Lith said, and then swallowed and looked away. Mithrandir waited, infinitely and cruelly patient until Lith forced the words out of his mouth. 'Luinmeord. Did he seem well? Do you think he is...happy?'

Mithrandir looked at Lith for a long time without speaking before he said,' Yes, Lith. I believe he is content. His captain said that he is high in the favour of King Thranduil and is soon to be given command of all the eastern reaches.'

'And Caranalder?'

'I am told he is a good regent and is much respected by his people.'

Lith nodded. His heart ached. 'Good,' he said. 'That is good. I did not expect I should see Luinmeord again, or Almscella or the others...but...I am glad that I did. Even though it hurt, even though I know I will never be forgiven. I hope they know I wish them nothing but joy.'

The wizard was watching him, and the firelight flickered over Mithrandir’s lined face. His eyes were very gentle. 

'If they do not, they are fools,' he said. 'When it is clear to any with eyes that there is not one ounce of malice in you. Ah, my elfling. Sometimes the griefs of this world cannot be measured, and the worst ills fall too often on those who deserve it least.'

Lith lay down along the branch and pulled his coat in around him. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was the wizard hunched beside the glowing embers of the fire with his pipe, a thin trail of smoke weaving around his beard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you everyone who reads and enjoys, and especially to all you guys who leave comments. I really love reading them!  
> We will wind up this part of the series at the end of the next chapter, but there is still plenty more tale to be told! I hope you stick around.


	7. 28th November 3018

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gandalf and Lith struggle to get a feverish Aragorn back to the safety of the Hidden Valley. Aragorn finally learns something of Lith’s past.

### 28th November 3018

Aragorn woke to feel someone shaking him. 

'Lith?' he murmured between heavy coughs. 

'Lith is here,' replied a familiar voice. 'As am I.'

'Gandalf,' Aragorn acknowledged, and sat up, blinking. The world seemed to swim before him and his whole body ached. His chest was heavy. 'Is it time to leave?'

'High time,' said the wizard, appearing in his vision as an unfocused patch of grey. 'You have slept late, Aragorn, but now we must be off and get you to Elrond as quickly as we can. Your fever worsens and we fear that the bite may be turning infected. Just your luck to fall prey to influenza and a wolf’s teeth on the same day.'

Aragorn groaned which quickly became another bout of coughing. When he paused for breath, Lith was crouched by his side, holding out a waterskin. Aragorn sneezed into his elbow and then took the skin, gratefully.

'Lith. You are well?'

'Yes, Aragorn,' the Elf said, though Aragorn thought he looked pale and troubled. 'I am well. Here, you should eat.'

Lith took Aragorn's hand, turned it over, and dropped a handful of berries and plant matter into his palm. Aragorn smiled wryly at how different the former Wood-elf’s idea of breakfast was to his last travelling companions, but he did not complain. Lith ate like a bird, or perhaps more accurately like a squirrel; in the last weeks Aragorn had become familiar with the way the Elf foraged as they walked, gathering nuts, acorns or fungi a few at a time, sometimes storing them away in his pockets or backpack, but more usually eating them raw straight from the tree. It had seemed rather an endearing trait until Aragorn had realised that it was probably one born out of long deprivation. 

'Aragorn?' a voice said. He looked up with a start to realise he had let his thoughts distract him. The Elf and Wizard were still waiting for him to respond. 

'Sorry,' he murmured, suppressing a cough. 'I am ready, I think.' He quickly examined the food Lith had provided. After discretely discarding a few pieces of mushroom he was fairly certain were poisonous to any but Elfkind, he ate the rest of the berries: bitter sloes, woody haws and late blackberries, soft and over ripe. Then he got to his feet, a rather more difficult a task then he had expected, as it turned out. His right leg burned like it had been set aflame the moment he put his weight on it and he fell, biting back a cry. That of course irritated his throat and he slumped to the floor, gripping his calf and hacking up mouthfuls of sour phlegm into the grass. When next he could focus on anything but the combined pain in his chest and leg, Lith and Gandalf were crouched either side of him, talking rapidly in that strange dialect of Silvan Elvish that Lith always seemed to revert to in moments of stress. 

'I am not dying,' Aragorn rasped at them, the moment he could catch his breath. 'There is no need to speak over me.'

'I am sorry,' said Gandalf, reverting smoothly to Sindarin. 'We were just deciding what to do with you. I will go on ahead to Elrond's house and bring back Elves with horses--' 

'Nonsense. There is no decision to make,' Aragorn argued, sitting up. 'We are barely a day from Imladris. I will be perfectly fine to make it on my own legs. Come, help me up.'

Lith just stared at him with an unreadable expression. Then, slowly, he came over and took hold of Aragorn’s arm. 

'This is against my better judgement,' muttered the wizard, but between them they got the Ranger back up on his feet. Aragorn tested his foot against the floor; it was painful indeed and throbbed with a hot beat that he knew meant infection was setting in. But he could walk, more or less, hobbling along on the staff Lith had cut for him and thinking he probably looked more elderly than the wizard. Lith took Aragorn's pack again without a word, and Aragorn was grateful. 

His determination to walk home under his own power fuelled him for the next few hours, but it was not long after that Aragorn found his mind drifting into a fevered haze he couldn’t shake. His head swam like he was underwater and his companions’ voices became little more than a soft buzz. Every so often either the Elf or wizard pressed a waterskin into his hands when his lungs seized up, wracking him with wet, painful coughs. Before long the occasional hand under his elbow to guide his steps had become a permanent feature, that then developed into an arm around his waist. By the time Aragorn realised that the rushing he could hear was the waters of the Bruinen and not the sound of his own blood in his ears, his right arm was up over a pair of narrow shoulders and he was being all but carried along. When he opened his eyes and peered to the right, Lith’s unkempt tangle of white-gold hair was quite unmistakable, even to Aragorn's clouded senses. Aragorn looked the other way and saw the rushing waters of the Bruinen carving deeply through a narrow valley. Ahead the river turned sharply around a rocky pinnacle he had passed a hundred times before. They were little over five miles from the Hidden Valley.

'We’re nearly home,' Aragorn croaked, surprised, and then lost all breath for speech as his chest tightened. 

'I should stay quiet if I were you, Aragorn,' Gandalf said from off to his left. He sounded stern but amused. 'You sound like you are standing at the very doors to the Halls of Waiting. You will frighten the hobbits when we arrive.'

'Nonsense,' muttered Aragorn, letting his head flop back. He could feel himself shivering. 'It is just a cold and a few scratches.'

'Of course it is,' the wizard muttered. 'Sometimes I don’t know which of the two of you is worse.'

They continued for a few more moments until Aragorn stumbled, stubbing his foot against a stone. Pain jabbed up his right leg and he nearly slid from Lith’s grasp. The Elf stopped, tightening his grip on Aragorn’s waist. 

'Are you well?' he asked, quiet and anxious.

'Yes. Fine,' Aragorn said, with his teeth gritted. 

'Perhaps you should…' the Elf began, and then stopped himself. Aragorn had a feeling Lith had been going to suggest Aragorn take some of the pain-bite, but it was probably just as well that he had not vocalised the thought. Given how wan and twitchy Lith looked at the moment, it was probably better if neither of them let their thoughts dwell on the herb right at that moment.

'Let us take a brief rest,' Gandalf suggested. 'We are not far from our destination and it will do us no harm to catch our breath for a few minutes.'

The pair of them helped Aragorn sit on the bank so he could stretch his leg out before him. He rested his head on his other knee, trying not to start coughing again. 

Lith crouched beside him, his hands fluttering uncertainly over the area of the wound. He looked up at Gandalf. 'Should we change the bandages again?'

'Nay,' Aragorn answered instead, wearily, shivering hard. 'The wound will keep until we reach Imladris.'

'It should,' said the wizard. 'You, I am less sure about,' and he passed both of them a flask of cordial. The drink was reviving and fresh, and Aragorn rallied enough to eat a little as the three travellers shared the last food from their packs. Aragorn realised with a slight guilty turn that the old wizard had taken on the burden of carrying Aragorn's pack while Lith had been busy supporting the man himself. Gandalf saw his look and waved his apology away.

'I am not as decrepit as that quite yet, young Aragorn,' he said with narrowed eyes. 

Aragorn laughed, which of course triggered his cough once more. He slumped back, breathless, and considered his two strange traveling companions, grateful for their presence and fortitude. Mithrandir he had known for a long count of years and yet the wizard in many ways would ever be a mystery to him. And then there was Lith. The Elf had darted up into a leafless beech to check the lie of the land the moment the others were settled, but he had not yet come down. Aragorn could see him crouched on a low branch against the trunk, looking far away. The thoughts of the Eldar ran deep and were difficult for those other races to read from their expressions alone, leaving many to think Elves distant and untouched by emotion—a fallacy, of course, for they felt as deeply as any mortal: love, joy and despair alike. Aragorn had a lifetime of experience deciphering the thoughts of Elves, and on Lith's face he saw writ uncertainty. Aragorn wondered why the Elf was still travelling with them as he was clearly so ill at ease and had been so insistent he would not come into the Valley again. Perhaps Gandalf had said something to persuade him. Aragorn wondered what the history between the Elf and the wizard might be, and how long they had known one another.

'Tell me a tale of your adventures together,' Aragorn said, at last. 'I need something to distract me. Lith spoke before about a rescue from a fire?'

'Did he now?' said Gandalf, raising both brows and looking up towards the Elf.

'He asked why you called me Lith,' the Elf said. He sounded defensive, and did not come down from the tree. 'I did not raise the subject.'

'Some other tale then,' said Aragorn, quickly, hoping he had not taken another wrong turn navigating the treacherous maze of the Elf’s past, but to his surprise, Gandalf laughed.

'Nay, do not let him scare you off, Aragorn, he is merely saving his own embarrassment. You see, the incident with the fire involved me rescuing this troublemaker out of a blazing windmill.'

'I quite certainly rescued myself,' Lith retorted, lightning fast. 'I am not as decrepit as that quite yet, either.'

Lith’s quick-witted reply startled a laugh from Aragorn. For all that the Elf seemed to have been growing comfortable with Aragorn’s presence, hearing him jest with Gandalf made it clear just how far the Ranger still had to go to break through Lith’s defences. He had overheard the argument between the two last night and thought the wizard and Elf to be at odds, but now he realised that perhaps the conflict had only come about because Gandalf knew Lith better than any other.

'Now I am curious indeed,' Aragorn said. 'But too breathless to ask questions. Will you not tell me the whole tale?'

He sat back and listened as the story of the rescue from the fire was retold in full, and it was a dramatic tale—spilled embers from a bread oven had set a mannish farmstead on the sides of Bree-hill ablaze, trapping the miller and his family within their burning farmhouse. The farm workers sleeping in the barn had quickly set up a chain of buckets from the well to fight the blaze, but it was clearly in vain. Lith, who happened to have found some work on the farm as a harvest labourer, had scaled the adjacent windmill and jumped to the farmhouse roof, where he had torn a hole in the shingles big enough to pull the family out. By the time the men who had run to the nearby villages for help returned, the family had been safe but Lith had been overcome by the smoke in the house and was insensate and barely breathing. Fortunately a certain wizard happened to have been staying at the inn in Bree and had been amongst those who answered the summons for help.

Gandalf was, as was well known, an excellent storyteller, and perhaps it was that rather than the delirium of fever but Aragorn almost thought he could hear the crackle of flames and smell the burning straw and thick smoke as the words wove around him. Gandalf was clearly enjoying embellishing the tale for dramatic effect. Lith rolled his eyes more often than he verbally objected to the elaborations, but the tale achieved its goal of distracting them all from their present hurts. If the wizard did indeed know the significance of giving Lith his name, he did not make much of it in the retelling, only saying that, though they knew each other well before that event, he had not even recognised who he was reviving at first. The Elf had remained stained with ash and charcoal for days until Gandalf had taken him to the home of a friend to recover.

It was time to move on again, for the day was passing and they were still a few hours from their destination. Standing up on his bad leg was now perhaps even more painful than it had been that morning, so much so that Aragorn finally gave in and took a small pinch of pain-bite when Lith was distracted by a passing deer. The dried herb was bitter on his tongue even though he dared risk no more than a fraction of the Elf's normal dose. Rivendell was near, after all, and then Aragorn would gladly submit himself up to Elrond's care.

They finally set off again, Lith under his shoulder, supporting Aragorn's weight as best he could, and Mithrandir carrying the baggage. Aragorn swayed, dizzy, but Lith held him firm, and they hobbled on. It did not last. The _naegranaeth_ had deadened the pain, but could do nothing for the fever Aragorn could feel burning in his blood and sapping his strength, and when his leg next gave out he could not find the will to get up again. Over his ragged coughs he heard Lith and Gandalf in quiet discussion. Then, before he could even catch his breath, Aragorn was being rolled forward until his front was slumped across Lith's shoulders. The Elf carefully stood, lifting him up off the ground. 

'I can walk…' Aragorn began, but Gandalf hushed him.

"I'm sure you could if we wanted this journey to take us until the end of the Third Age. Now, lie still, Aragorn, and let Lith concentrate. You would not want him to lose his balance and pitch you into the canyon by mistake.'

'I will do no such thing,' Lith assured him earnestly, as they began to walk on. 'You are quite safe.' Indeed, the Elf's natural balance and grace meant the additional burden seemed to trouble him little, even with his own arm still unusable and bound to his chest.

Aragorn capitulated and lay still. Though he would have preferred to arrive home on his own two legs, at least he was not insensible this time. Besides, there was no shame in injury, nor in accepting the help of a friend if it put them in no danger to offer it. He quickly found the smooth motion of Lith's steps and the murmur of the others' voices to be lulling his mind, and without meaning to he felt his head fall forward and his eyes close. He drifted into sleep.

* * *

Aragorn woke he knew not how much later to the sound of footsteps on stone and Gandalf saying, with a laugh, "Nay, my good Elf, he just sleeps. Do not be distressed."

Aragorn blinked open his eyes and lifted his head to realise he had drowsed away the rest of the journey. They were standing at the top of the road where it sharply turned and plunged down the steep cleft of the Hidden Valley towards the rushing waters of the Bruinen and the Last Homely House. Aragorn turned his head and saw his first glimpse of the House below, and the beauty of it took his breath away just like every time. Although this time he had less breath to spare than normal.

Three Elves of the inner watch were standing in the road before them. Aragorn read in their expressions concern, alarm, and barely concealed unfriendliness. For a moment he was confused and then he remembered. Lith. 

'I believe it to be nothing more than a mortal illness combined with a slight incident with a wolf.' Gandalf was replying to some question, and Aragorn noticed he had positioned himself between Lith and the other Elves. 'A little rest and some of Elrond's poultices and Aragorn will be good as new. There really is no cause for alarm.'

'Put me down,' Aragorn instructed but Lith did not seem to hear him. He was looking towards the other Elves and seemed very tense. Aragorn raised his voice to address the guards instead. 'Nengeldir, Ialla, Leithor, well met. As you can see I am fine, though I have a few rather irritating holes in my leg so perhaps if we could proceed...?'

It was difficult to sound reassuring and authoritative while repressing lung-wracking coughs and being carted around like a sack of potatoes, but he tried. The Elves, who had been looking from Gandalf to Lith and back again, turned their eyes on him instead. 

'Aragorn,' Ialla said, and then pointed at Lith. 'It is forbidden--' she began, but Gandalf cut her off.

'My friend Lith was until recently a guest of Lord Elrond, and came and went freely through these lands. I expect you to give him the same courtesy now.' The wizard's affectation of good humour was rapidly vanishing. 'I thought this was the Last Homely House, or has it been renamed since I left four days ago?"

'I will vouch for him if that satisfies you,' Aragorn told the guard. 'Now, if you do not mind, I should like to go home.'

Nengeldir stepped forward. 'We will carry you.' He said. 

Lith took a corresponding step back and Aragorn felt his grip tighten.

'No,' Lith answered, shortly. 

'You heard him,' Gandalf said to Nengeldir with a shrug. 'No assistance is required, thank you. Now, come along, everyone,' and he marched forward onto the road. The Elves, who either had to move or get a faceful of pointed hat, decided to retreat, letting the group pass. Aragorn saw Ialla whisper something to Leithor and the latter took off towards the house ahead of them like a hare.

The party descended down the road into the valley, weaving through the ancient stands of woods that grew all around, and at last reaching the shores of the river and crossing the line of bridges that took them on towards the house.

'Ah, Mithrandir. What is this?' said a familiar voice as the little group emerged under an archway and out into the main courtyard. Elrond was coming down the steps towards them from the house. A slight smile graced his lips, although Leithor and Erestor followed behind and certainly were not smiling. 

'Put me down,' Aragorn said again to Lith, and this time Lith did as he was bidden. He knelt carefully, and Aragorn slid down off his shoulders into an ungainly heap. Lith took his arm while Aragorn gripped the silent Elf by the shoulder and between them they got him up to standing.

'It has been many years since anyone had to carry you home, Aragorn,' said Elrond, coming further down the steps. 'At least this time I am pleased to see you are not insensate. Mithrandir, welcome back.' Elrond also glanced at Lith but said nothing.

Gandalf inclined his head in greeting. 'Lord Elrond, you will be pleased to see my instincts for trouble are as sharp as ever. I'm afraid our Dúnadan has been rather bested by the elements.'

Aragorn made to speak up in his own defence but a fit of coughing overtook him. Elrond looked Aragorn over, consideringly. 'Hmm. I do not like the sound of that cough, Aragorn.'

'That's a shame,' Aragorn answered, weakly, as soon as he could breathe. 'I was up all night practising.'

Elrond raised an eyebrow at the rather pathetic jest and then turned to the wizard. 'Where on earth did you find him, Mithrandir?'

Gandalf smiled. 'They were only about five leagues from here, and doing quite well, but I am glad I was nearby to offer a helping hand. Now, I could do with a bath, and I believe both of these two need a healer's care. They fought off a _brôgaraf_ together, after all.'

'Indeed?'

'My Lord,' said the guard Ialla, hurriedly, and pointed again at Lith. 'That one is--'

'Yes, I am aware, thank you,' Elrond dismissed her, smoothly. 'Leithor has already told me all.'

Elrond then turned his attention on Lith at last, and Aragorn felt the Wood-elf tense up as Elrond's intense gaze fell on him. The Elf-lord in turn seemed to be studying Lith carefully as if weighing up some consideration. 

'So, you have indeed returned,' Elrond said at last. He spoke quietly as if his words were for Lith alone.

Lith said nothing. 

'Lord Elrond, I would speak to you,' Aragorn began, trying to intervene on behalf of his friend, but Elrond gave a slight motion of his hand that compelled the man to wait. He studied Lith intently and for once Aragorn did not know what the Elf-lord was thinking. 

But to his surprise, instead of hunching up with fear beneath the scrutiny as Aragorn had expected, Lith slowly straightened and stood still beneath Elrond's gaze, meeting the lord's eyes steadily. It was an odd thing to think but in that moment Lith looked poised, powerful. Almost regal.

'I believe,' Elrond said at last, looking back to Aragorn. 'That we should see to your injuries before we have any further debate. But I will say now,' he raised his voice so that all who were gathered around could easily hear. 'That _any_ who is not a servant of the enemy is welcome here in Imladris, and will be treated as a guest of this house, with all due civility. Now, come along, Aragorn, Lith. Let us see what the damage is this time.'

As Elrond spoke Lith's name, a ripple of sound, almost a gasp, spread around the Elves gathered in the courtyard. Elrond seemed not to heed it and turned away, heading back up the stairs into the house. Gandalf gave Aragorn and Lith a quick wink before he followed the Elf-lord. At his side, Aragorn felt the tension flow out of Lith like the air being released from a children's leather ball, and his shoulders curled in again as if only now he had received Elrond's approval he was trying to fade from sight. 

And then, without further ado, Aragorn found himself being swept onto a bier and carried up into the house. The Elves bore him noiselessly along familiar halls and walkways until they arrived at Elrond's healing rooms and the Elves set him down on a pallet bed by the window. Elrond and his assistants began to lay out the tools of their trade. Aragorn glanced around but found that Lith had vanished. Gandalf, who had followed them, gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and then headed off to track down the missing Elf. Neither of them returned.

It took a few hours for Elrond to complete his treatments. The infection in Aragorn's lungs even Elvish healers could do little for but monitor the fever and recommend rest in the warm and dry. Elrond brewed up a selection of teas and infusions of soothing herbs mixed with honey and rosehip syrup to combat the worst symptoms, and while Aragorn sipped the tea, Elrond examined his other wounds. The cut in Aragorn's upper arm from Lith's bolt was healing well but the wolf bite in his right calf was indeed infected and weeping. Fortunately the tooth punctures were neat and the flesh only torn in a few places, thanks to the protection afforded by his boot. Still, Elrond and his assistants were careful to cleanse and debride the bite thoroughly before the wound could be stitched closed, which was most unpleasant. By the time they were nearly complete, the warmth and comfort of the ward cot, and the lingering numbness of the pain-bite, were taking their toll and Aragorn could feel himself close to falling asleep again. He felt exhausted. 

Elrond had dismissed the assistant healers and was fixing the last dressings in place when Aragorn managed to rouse himself enough to speak. 

'I wanted to thank you for permitting Lith to stay here.'

Elrond nodded slowly. 'Well, once I realised that without him you may well be in a wolf's belly, Aragorn, it seemed churlish to deny him at least a minimum of hospitality he had earned. He has stayed here before, after all, and I admitted him then on Gandalf's word alone, although then they managed to cross the border without such a spectacle.'

'I hoped you would let him enter here, but did not expect you to use his name.’ Aragorn said. ‘That you have not done before. I have learned from Lith that being Renamed carries much meaning.' 

Elrond pinned the last bandage in place with a blackthorn and leaned back. 'It does. But, just between you and I, acknowledging his name was an impulsive action on my part, and perhaps one poorly thought through. Once you have lived as long as I have, sometimes you must take steps to surprise yourself. But I fear my rashness may have consequences that I cannot yet forsee. It is dangerous to shelter him here, no doubt.'

Elrond moved away to wash his hands in a silver basin.

'You do not believe that _he_ presents a danger, though,' Aragorn mused. 'Or you should not have admitted him at all. Do you think instead that some here may refuse your instruction and try to do him harm?'

'Nay. Those who reside here will follow my instruction in this, I have no doubt.' Elrond said. 'They may think me at times eccentric but they will do as I ask; he will not be welcome here but he will not be harmed. As for the reaction from others outside this Valley, that I cannot say. But still it seems to me foolish to abide by the letter of archaic laws when the doom of this age hangs in the balance. If ever there was a time for forgiveness and compassion it is now, perhaps here at the end of our days.' 

'True. If the ring falls into Sauron's hands, any prior grievances between his enemies shall seem petty indeed.' Aragorn agreed, and then yawned. Elrond smiled at him. 

'Come now,' the Elf Lord said. 'It is time you went to your rest, and as your wounds are not overly dangerous you need not remain here for observation. Now, I am not asking you to breach a confidence, but Mithrandir indicated that your new friend also bears a wound. I trust his condition is not severe?'

Aragorn nodded his head. 'He will keep, for now.'

'Then I shall have Erestor assign him a room and leave him to Mithrandir for tonight.' 

Elrond stood aside while Aragorn stood, carefully. With the aid of a pair of light crutches he could walk surprisingly well, though he knew an attendant healer would still be assigned to accompany him back to his rooms regardless.

'Send word if you need more honey-tea before the morning.' Elrond instructed. 'Or if the fever worsens. And tomorrow you will bring your skittish friend to me so I can see what ails him.' 

I will, my lord. Thank you.'

'And Aragorn?' 

Elrond's voice halted him by the door and he glanced back. The Elf-lord's face bore a look of severity that did not quite reach his sparkling eyes. 'One more thing. Your friend is welcome here in Imladris, by my leave, as long as he wishes to stay and continues to purport himself with good conduct. But please do let him know that if he has an interest in herb craft, I would prefer to teach him myself before he resorts to helping himself from my stores? Thank you.'

* * *

Aragorn slept deeply and long. He finally awoke nearly at noon the following day when the Lady Arwen arrived at his chamber with a tray of soup and white bread, freshly brewed healing teas, a servant carrying hot bathwater, and a lot of questions. Aragorn took the hint and bathed first, being careful to keep his bandaged injury dry, and then the pair ate together on the wide balcony outside the room, watching the comings and goings of the household while Aragorn recounted the events of the last few weeks. As he had expected her first concerns were for his health, but he could tell her with complete honesty that he was feeling a significant improvement. The coughing, fatigue and fever seemed to be quickly loosening their grip, and with the aid of Elrond’s numbing salves, the pain from the wolf bite had lessened enough that he could rest easily and walk with the aid of the crutches. Within two weeks he hoped the injury would be quite healed, and there would be no need to delay Frodo's quest on his account.

Arwen’s next interest was, of course, Lith. From what little he knew of the Elf, Aragorn had assumed that he would avoid the house as much as possible. He had left Lith’s nighttime dose of pain-bite on the porch table beside the open windows of his chambers, hoping the elusive Elf would find it there if he came seeking his draught when Aragorn was still insensible from Elrond’s treatments. Beside it he had left a note informing Lith of the scheduled appointment with the healers the following day. Aragorn had heard nothing as he slept, but when he woke, the draught was gone. The note remained and Lith had not reappeared.

Aragorn doubted there were many in the house by now that had not heard of the events in the courtyard yesterday when Elrond had accepted the exile into the Valley. The last time Lith had been in Imladris during the Council, few had known of his presence for he had kept to himself until the Wood-elves had denounced him. No-one had yet seen him, but there was a tension amongst the Elves of the household which could not be denied.

'I know of the Bodadêldir,' Arwen said when Aragorn asked her. 'All Elves have, and I do not think there are any amongst the Eldar who would not recognise the Mark of the Exile.' She brushed her thumb across Aragorn's cheek, the shape of a cross, to show what she meant. He kissed her hand. 

‘It seems a relic of a darker age,’ Aragorn said. 

'Perhaps, or more one should say it is a product of those ages. Criminal acts amongst the Firstborn are rare but not unknown, even now. But we do not take life in pursuit of justice, however terrible the act. And to be exiled is at least a lesser sentence than many cultures of men would demand,’ Arwen reminded him. ‘Still, never has an Unnaming occurred in Imladris in my lifetime—thankfully there has never been a crime to warrant it, but it happened once amongst the Galadhrim while I dwelt in Lorien. It frightens me that you travelled with one capable of such deeds for so long. I am glad you are safe, beloved.'

'I was in no danger,' Aragorn reassured her. 'Not from Lith, at least. I do not know why he was cast out, but I would swear that he is no threat to me, or any of good intention. I admit I am perplexed that he could commit such a crime; it seems to me to be the antithesis of his very nature. Your father spoke of Kinslaying but I know no more than that, and I very much doubt Lith would tell me even if I were to ask. He is not forthcoming with information about himself. Indeed, unless it is to point out a fascinating tree or flight of birds he speaks very little about anything.'

'Even those that know of the crime will not speak of it now,' Arwen said. 'It is forbidden to do so once the sentence of exile has been passed.’

‘Still, I cannot help but think it cruel,’ Aragorn sighed. ‘I have only known him a few weeks, but his actions at Tandoliant and after the wolf attack show nothing but a selfless and courageous heart, if one weighed down by isolation and bitter sorrow. I find it hard to think that he could commit so awful a crime as he was accused.’

Arwen gave him a look. ‘Did you not say that he shot you?’

Aragorn hesitated. ‘He did, yes,' he admitted. 'But only as a warning, I think. He was sore afraid and did not mean to harm.’

‘Beloved, you are capable of seeing only the good in everyone,’ Arwen said, with a soft smile. ‘Even in those that perhaps do not deserve your mercy. I cannot say that I would think the fate of a Bodadêldir an unjust punishment if it were one of my kin which he had silenced forever.’

‘Unless it were Erestor,’ Aragorn joked. Arwen swatted his knee, lightly.

'Do not jest of such things,' she said. 'Besides, if any were going to murder Erestor, father would have done it long ago.'

'What happens to the family of a Bodadêldir, do you think?’ Aragorn wondered, more soberly. ‘If the accused had a spouse or parents? Siblings? Would they also suffer condemnation?'

Arwen shook her head. 'I do not know, but I do not think so. A Bodadêldir is a purging, and thus the exile becomes as one dead to Elvenkind. Their former family would go into Mourning and then once the prescribed ten years have passed, go on as if the Bodadêldir no longer existed. Others would grieve for the community's dead child, as they grieved for his victim. Thus a Kinslaying takes two lives, always.' 

She looked out across the valley, her dark eyes thoughtful and sad. ‘Perhaps your compassion should be a lesson to us after all, beloved. Now I am forced to think of it, I cannot imagine how it must feel to go on, knowing I shall ever be denied sight of Imladris or Caras Galadhon. To be condemned never even to seek the peace of the Blessed Realm…’

Aragorn sighed, her last words waking in him fear again, although not for Lith this time but for Arwen, and the fate their love condemned her to. For a while they spoke of other things, of the preparations for the quest, and the antics of the hobbits. Aragorn was not surprised to learn that the Elves of Mirkwood had already departed the Valley for their home. The Wood-elves had been the most vocal in their condemnation of Elrond's admittance of Lith to the Council, and although some weeks had passed since, their leader had apparently still threatened retaliation as they had departed. Elrond had seemed unconcerned. It was many leagues to the halls of the Woodking, after all, and time and distance would temper their ire. The Shipwright's emissaries had also departed although some of the Dwarves from Erebor remained still, as had Boromir, son of Denethor, and all of the hobbits. That was good news. Frodo had volunteered to bear the ring to Mordor, of course, and with him would go Sam, but Aragorn had thought that Merry and Pippin may have returned back to the Shire already with messages of warning for their people. It did not seem likely that war would come soon to that land, but should the quest fail and the ring return to the hand of its master, all lands would be covered in darkness and the fall of the Shire would be a terrible, final blow if they were caught unawares. But the cousins had not departed yet, and Aragorn found he had a desire to see them all again. 

Arwen accompanied him as they walked down slowly through the house to find the hobbits. Frodo and his friends were pleased to see them both although they were rather shy and flustered by the presence of Arwen. But true to their nature they soon overcame their awkwardness, and Arwen laughed as they showered 'Strider' with affectionate hugs and concern for his illness; word of his arrival by stretcher yesterday had apparently spread. The Ranger assured them that he was well on the way to recovery and would suffer no lasting effects. Rest and a warm bed had indeed done wonders for his strengt. For his part Aragorn too was pleased to see Frodo looking hale again as the hobbit had not since Weathertop, though it was clear that the upcoming quest troubled his thoughts.

At length Arwen departed for her afternoon ride, and shortly after Aragorn too left the Hobbits to their late luncheon and went in search, once more, of Gandalf. He had promised Elrond he would bring Lith into the healing wards this day, but he had little idea where the Elf would be found as he had seen no sight of him around the house. Aragorn was not particularly surprised that Lith was making himself scarce. While no more prone to gossip than any other folk, Aragorn had heard nothing since leavins his room but whispers amongst the Imladrin Elves about the return of the Bodadêldir. An enquiry with a dutiful but clearly horrified Erestor established that Lith had indeed been assigned guest chambers as Elrond had instructed in one of the talan-style rooms set aside for visiting Wood-elves. But when Aragorn limped his way out there, he found the chamber spotless and empty with no trace that Lith had ever even been through the door. Aragorn did not yet fear that the Elf had left Imladris entirely. If all the promises of aid and friendship truly weren't enough to keep him here, then the fact that Aragorn still held his only supply of pain medicine probably would be.

Gandalf, when Aragorn found the wizard, was seated on a stone bench overlooking the upper falls where a grove of beeches and maples dropped their last fiery leaves across the stone. The wizard was holding his pipe in one hand, but it did not appear to be lit.

‘Aragorn!’ Gandalf greeted the new arrival with pleasure as Aragorn hopped his way over with the crutches. “Excellent, excellent. Tell me Elrond has not hidden your pipeweed again. I appear to have been sitting here and thinking for so long that I have quite run out.’

‘Elrond gave up confiscating my pipeweed about fifty years ago, old friend,’ Aragorn laughed. ‘And yes, I have enough here for both of us.’

‘You look very much improved,’ Gandalf said, with satisfaction, as Aragorn sat and filled both their pipes. ‘I wasn’t too worried, of course—I know that the Rangers are hardier than the oldest oaks and I have seen you weather far worse than one wolf and some rain—but I think you collapsing on the roadside yesterday rather scared our poor elfling. Although he spends more time around mortals than is usual for Elves in these times, he still understands very little about their ailments.’

‘Aye, I am much improved. Some rest and dry clothes, not to mention Elrond’s remedies, have done me much benefit,’ Aragorn agreed, and then added, ‘It is actually in search of Lith that I am here. I know he came by my chamber yesterday eve but I was asleep and now I cannot find him. He does not seem to have made use of the guestroom assigned to him.'

'I have not seen him today,' Gandalf said, and then gestured out into the tree-lined valley. 'But I know he is close by. It is no surprise that he would avoid the house. Unless we seek him out I expect he will stay out in the woods until hunger or some other need drives him back to us.'

Aragorn glanced out across the trees with a frown. In between the hundred small silver falls that trickled into the valley, the trees—beech, elm and oak—wound their way along its foot beside the rushing waters, giving way in due course to the younger alder, birches and rowans climbing the upper slopes to merge into frosted mountain pines above. The woods looked peaceful and inviting, but for Aragorn, as familiar and freeing as the wilds of nature could be, a bed of branches and leaf-mould was no substitute for a hot bath and warm blankets, not in the middle of winter. Not if there was another choice.

‘Lith bears an old wound,' Aragorn explained to the wizard. 'When I was treating it, I promised that we would do all we could to improve its condition. Elrond wishes to see him today to assess the options for healing.’

Gandalf sat back, surprised. ‘You have seen Lith’s arm, then. I wondered as much when I saw the sling.’

‘I have. I treated it as best I could.’

'Well, indeed. That _is_ something,’ mused the wizard. ‘He has always refused to let me see it, although I am aware how the injury debilitates him. Very interesting indeed. You must have made quite the impression.’

‘He did not want to reveal it but the circumstances were far from ideal,’ Aragorn explained. He was surprised, as he was every time it happened, to find that there was something the wizard did _not_ know. Certainly, while he seemed familiar with the concept of Lith's injury, Gandalf gave no indication that he was aware of the nature of the wound, of Lith’s struggles with constant pain or his dependency on herbs to numb it. Still, as utterly as he trusted Gandal in all things, these were not Aragorn’s secrets to tell, so he merely said, ‘The old injury was exacerbated by events at the river. Lith indicated he had never shown the wound to another, although I thought as you had known Lith for some time he might have told you more of it.’

The wizard harrumphed. ‘I have guessed much. But no, certain things he still keeps to himself, for all that I know him perhaps better than any.’ The wizard might seem to grumble, but Aragorn knew his tone was fond. He cared very much for Lith. 

‘You knew him before his exile, I deem.'

'I met him once or twice as a very young elfling,’ Gandalf agreed. ‘As he was before. I heard after only that he had died. Then, some years after his exile, he was brought to me, wild and mute, and I tamed him back to what he is now. You could say I raised him. No, that is not right. I _restored_ him would perhaps be more accurate.’

‘I wish to know more of him, to help him if I can. Will you not tell me of it?’

Gandalf sat back and let a long draw of smoke drift out into the air.

'I will tell you of our second meeting, after he was exiled, but only because I perceive there is a bond between you, and I believe it may prove an important one.’

‘So you told me in a dream,’ Aragorn said. ‘But I do not yet perceive why.’

‘Neither do I,’ said the wizard, ‘But very well. Some years ago I received word via Radagast the Brown that I was to meet an old friend on the borders of Fangorn Forest at the end of autumn. I did not know entirely what to expect, for it had been some years since I had travelled through that forest and it is a wild and dangerous part of the world, and growing more so each year. Still, I answered the summons, and arrived at the outflow of the Entwash towards the end of September. That I was a little early was no doubt the result of my curiosity, but Treebeard must have been watching out for me, for he appeared the very next day.’

‘Treebeard?’ Aragorn asked. ‘What manner of being is he?' 

'He is a guardian of the forest. Treebeard is of the Onodrim, that men call _Ents_.’ 

'A Ent!' exclaimed Aragorn, fascinated. 'Then there is truth in the old legends about the dwellers in the deep forests and the giant shepherds of the trees? I thought them a memory, or no more than a legend of Rohan.'

'Nay,' said Gandalf. 'They are no legend, though even the Elves remember the Old Onodrim and their long sorrow now only in song, for the Ents are far older than they. Indeed Treebeard is the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth.

‘ “It has been many years, Treebeard,” I greeted him. “And though I am never loath to visit your woods, I have to wonder what on earth could be the matter that you would need my assistance?”

‘ “Hoo, hmm, Gandalf,” said he to me, “I am glad that you have come. Birds do not always make reliable messengers.”

‘ “But reach me your summons did,” said I. “Though I was far away and surprised to receive it. I will do all I can to help, but it has been some months now since I received word, and if you needed a wizard, either Saruman or Radagast could have served better, or faster.” 

‘ “I needed not so much any wizard as _you_ , Gandalf. I think you are best suited to a problem of this nature, for a sapling has come to root here in Fangorn that does not entirely belong.”

‘At that moment I glanced up into his branches—Ents are formed rather like to the trees they tend, you see, or perhaps they have merely grown more tree-like over time—and perched high up in his leaves like a bird I saw a very strange creature.’

‘Lith,’ Aragorn guessed.

The wizard nodded. ‘Treebeard lifted him out of his branches like you or I might disentangle a moth from a cobweb, and then the Ent set him on the ground. I barely got enough of a look to determine he was indeed an Elf before he scampered back behind the Ent’s great legs, like a startled rabbit into a burrow.

‘ “Well met, Master Elf,” I called to him, rather surprised, for I knew no Elves dwelt in Fangorn, and the folk of Lothlorien do not go there. "There is no need to be afraid. Come out and greet me."

‘ “Hoom hoom, he will not answer you, I think,” Treebeard said to me. “He has spent too long listening to the speech of trees, the tongue of roots and sap and cool rain on the leaves, that he forgets that he is no tree himself, nor even an Enting. While he has been welcome here, he needs to live now amongst his own kind, and remember himself, or I fear he will come to grief.”

‘ “What is his name? From where does he hail?” I asked, for these were very strange events and I could not see how it would come to pass that an Elf should end up lost in Fangorn and neither attempt to find his way out again nor any other come to seek him. While we talked, the Elf in question had remained hidden behind Treebeard but then a passing dragonfly caught his attention and he darted after it, seeming momentarily to forget his fear. As he studied the insect it gave me a better look at him. Seldom before had I seen one of the Eldar quite so wretched in appearance, for his feet were bare, his clothes little better than rags, and his hair was a bird’s nest. More importantly, he looked to be more than half starved, as if he had been living off nothing but air, acorns and Ent-draught for entirely too long.

‘ "That we do not know,’ Treebeard answered me. "He used to speak a few words now and again, but never has he given a name for himself, a true name or otherwise. And as for where he comes from, hoom. Well, that I cannot say. I guess he came from the woods of Laurelindórenan and perhaps drifted south down the river like a leaf on the stream. I do not know how he came to be lost here, but perhaps you can learn his true home, Gandalf, and take him safely back there."

‘“How long has he been here?’” I asked, but Treebeard laughed, a long slow laugh.

‘How long?” he said. “We Ents do not keep count of such things, Gandalf. More than one leaf-fall but less than an age of the earth.”

‘I pressed him, and at last he admitted that it may be more than three-thousand days since the Elf had first wandered into the wild wood.

‘ “He seems content here, but there is something not right,” the Ent said. “Hoo hmm, I cannot put it into words, Gandalf. The Elf-children should be merry, even in these fading times. He has too much sorrow in him; the rot of it goes deep into his heartwood. We Ents have cared for him as best as we are able, but we move and think too slowly these days while he withers away. This elfling needs someone who better understands the way of his people to root out the decay from him before it is too late.”

'And so just like that,’ Gandalf concluded, with a sigh. ‘The Ents gave Lith over into my charge and I had an Elf in my keeping.'

'You did not recognise him then, or know from where he hailed?' Aragorn asked, looking across the valley, and all its breathtaking, sublime tranquility. Somewhere out there, Lith remained hidden, a mystery still.

'At that time no, although I determined the truth before too long. I deem you yourself have guessed much in your short time together. I did know one thing immediately that Treebeard clearly did not, however, and that was the meaning behind the mark on his face. Lith is not the first Bodadêldir I have known, after all. I did not tell Treebeard so but there certainly was to be no returning the Elf home for he had no home to return to.'

Aragorn stood and leaned on the railing, pondering the wizard's tale while he looked across the peaceful valley towards the distant beeches. 'I am surprised Lith went with you at all,' he said. 'I have not known him to be free with his trust, particularly towards strangers.'

'He did not remember me at first and was mortally afraid,' Gandalf agreed. 'And I think if I had not had arrived on horseback I might not have got him to come away with me at all. But he was quite taken with the beast and permitting the elfling to ride her was the first slow step in earning his trust. I persevered, and at length he followed me, and I took him north with me on my travels as I worked to strengthen his body and heal his mind, teaching him to speak again and how to think like an Elf or man, how to hold discourse with living things other than trees, beasts and birds. It was not an easy road for either of us as Lith had become fey and feral in the wild woods of the Ents, and he did not love me for uprooting him or forcing him to recall what he was. But at long last he was restored enough to himself that he could at least imitate normal speech and behaviour, and pass more or less unremarked in the towns of men. Then we parted ways, for I had my own tasks to achieve and there were many places I could not go with him at my side. We have met again a few times across the years, including the incident with the fire in Breeland that he spoke to you of.’

‘You have missed his company, I deem.’

Gandalf sighed. ‘I have worked hard and invested much in him, and often he has been nothing but a merry thorn in my side,’ he grumbled. ‘But yes, he is most dear to me. I would see him restored to joy, though I fear that can never be.’

'How long ago was all this?' 

'Not long as Elves would consider it,' the wizard said. 'I believe it was during the harrying of Rohan, the year that Thorongil rode out to war with Thengel.'

'That was some sixty years ago!"

'Indeed. And while you and I have wandered Middle-earth that long and more, I fear the years are a far greater burden to one who must spend them alone, rejected by all folk and with no end or relief in sight. I cannot blame Lith for turning away from the world that shunned him and losing himself in the forests. Perhaps it was cruelty on my part to bring him back. Who can say?'

They sat in silence for some time. Distantly, Aragorn heard singing, though it was not the high clear voices of Elves he heard but strong baritones of at least three Dwarves, and after a moment a hobbit or two also joined in their cheerful walking tune. Their voices blended well together.

'I was not aware of much in the few days before we returned here,' Aragorn admitted. 'But I was surprised when I realised you had persuaded him to return to Imladris with us.'

'I almost did not,' the Wizard agreed. 'If you had not been so sick, I think he would certainly have turned back and disappeared into the Wild once more, whatever I said. But you have inspired a fierce loyalty in him, Aragorn, and I do not think he will find it easy to leave again. I urge you,' the wizard said, meeting his eyes seriously, 'to be careful with his friendship and his trust, for both are immensely fragile things.'

'I know, and believe me, I feel in full the responsibility of bearing both. I will do all I can not to fail him, for it is clear to me that his loneliness is eating him alive. This exile, this punishment...how do the Elves expect anyone to bear it?'

'That is simple,' said the wizard. He sounded angry and resigned all at once. 'They do not.'

Aragorn paused. ‘How do you mean?'

'Aragorn, consider this. Amongst the lands of men, what is the usual punishment for a crime such as murder?'

'Most laws would impose a penalty of corporal punishment. In Gondor murder is punished by hanging: in Rohan, decapitation.'

'Exactly. But the Elves of this age hold it sacrosanct that none can do harm to another of the Firstborn, not even in punishment. So the lessons of ages past have been learned. So when such laws were broken and the need arose, another, subtler punitive method was devised. Turn the accused out into the wilds, deny him all help and bonds, make sure all those who see him curse him and drive him away...'

'...and wait for the wilderness to take his life,' concluded Aragorn. ‘Orc, warg or winter.’

'That is one way, yes,' agreed the wizard. 'But no Elf can easily endure such isolation from their own kind, not for a fifty years, let alone an eternity. The very thought of it is torment enough. And to be denied Valinor too...A lone Elf might survive all the dangers you mentioned easily enough, only to find that despair is no less deadly.'

'You are saying they do violence to themselves?' Aragorn said, as realisation dawned.

'I know of seven made _Bodadêldir_ since the end of the Second Age.’ The wizard said as he looked out across the valley. 'Four of those died by their own hand within fifty years of the judgement, and two more within a century. The Elves may claim to be more lofty than men in their dealings of justice, but the _Penenith,_ the Unnaming, is a death sentence too. Just slower, and infinitely more cruel.'

Aragorn thought of the way Lith had thrown himself into the river after the drowning child without a thought. Then just two days later he had stood between Aragorn and the teeth of the wolf. He pictured the way the Elf had laid cold and still and barely breathing after taking too much of the _naegranaeth_ ; the tormented look of shame and self-loathing in his eyes when he had given up the herb to Aragorn's keeping. Lith had been standing on a knife's edge this whole time, and none of them had seen it until it was nearly too late. 

'You will not tell me who he was,' Aragorn said at length. 'Before he was Unnamed?'

The wizard looked at Aragorn, carefully. 'No.’ he said. ‘But, consider—he has shown you alone what they did to his arm, and I deem you will not tell me of that.'

'No,' Aragorn agreed. 'I will not. But I think you understand why.'

'I do. His trust is a very precious thing. Besides, he will not show me because I think he is afraid that I could not control my anger if I saw it.'

'And would you?’ Aragorn asked. ‘Control your anger, that is.'

'Did _you_?' Gandalf countered. Aragorn gave a little smile.

'Not entirely. I did have to go and express some of my sentiments on a nearby log pile with an axe after I had treated him. But I think I have calmed myself well enough that I would not feel the need to put an axe to one of those that passed that judgement if they were here now.'

'Then you were the right person for him to trust,' said Gandalf. 'With that truth, and with others too. Between you, I and Lord Elrond, I hope we can do enough to bring him some measure of peace.'

'Then when we must be swift about it,' Aragorn said. 'For November is nearly over, and the ringbearer cannot halt his departure indefinitely. By Yule the company departs, and with it must go you and I. Lith will be left behind once more.'

‘Our time indeed runs short,’ Gandalf agreed. ‘In this, and all things.’

* * *

The end of Part 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends Part 1 of "A fire shall be woken."  
> Lith and Aragorn may be safe at last in Rivendell, but many challenges lie ahead and everywhere are secrets still to be revealed. The first chapter of Part 2 will be arriving next week. 
> 
> Thank you all for your interest and comments in this little tale. I've really enjoyed writing it though it has been a challenge, and knowing folks are enjoying reading too makes it all worthwhile. I hope you'll join me for Part 2.
> 
> If you are interested, the next chapter is just a short author's note on Lith's age.


	8. Author's note

### A note on Lith's age

A few folks here and on ff.net have commented on Lith's age in this tale, and it's a subject that fascinates me so I just wanted to say something more about it. This tale is an AU so of course I can (and will) do what I want, as I believe all fanfic authors should! However, I don’t think the age I give Lith/Legolas here (less that 600) is impossible when keeping to canon, or even unlikely. Unlike the rest of the Fellowship Tolkien never specifies a birth year for Legolas, which is probably more to do with him being a very late addition to the professor’s writings than anything intentional. PJ's movieverse gives an arbitrary age for Legolas of 2931 which a lot of people vibe with, and that's cool, but I don't think it fits. A lot of excellent researchers have tried to make estimations for Legolas’s age from what we get in the books, and while conclusions are mainly drawn on omissions or very general comments Legolas makes about himself, I think there is still a clear argument for Legolas being very young, perhaps even the youngest known Elf east of the sea. This is the reasoning:

  * Legolas is unfamiliar with many places and peoples the Fellowship encounter. When speaking of the Ñoldorin Elves of Hollin in FoTR he says ‘the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk’, and so he must have been born after his grandfather Oropher led other Sindar refugees of Doriath east from Lindon over the Misty Mountains some 6000 years before.
  * Likewise Legolas has never been to Lothlórien and seems to know very little about it or its people. Therefore he was also not around before Oropher took his people across the Anduin where they merged with the Silvan Elves of the Greenwood and Oropher was taken by them as their king. In the subsequent years there was still frequent travel and communication between the newly founded Woodland Realm and Lórien, though eventually Oropher began to move his people further away from the Dwarves of Moria and from Galadriel and Celeborn, whom he distrusted. Legolas seems also to know nothing of this bad history between the realms; also evidence he was not born at this time.
  * Moving to the end of the Second Age, Legolas is not mentioned at all during any account of the Last Alliance, although both Oropher and Thranduil were recorded there, and Oropher was killed during the Battle of Dagorlad, along with two-thirds of the Wood-elf army.
  * Thranduil, Legolas’s father, continued his father’s isolationist ways after the power of Dol Guldur began to rise once more in TA 1000; he cut all ties with Lórien and retreated with what was left of their people northwards beyond the Mountains of Mirkwood and the Old Dwarf Road, and established his kingdom of Northern Mirkwood, constructing a palace below ground. In FoTR, Legolas talks of Elves building subterranean settlements as if it were ancient history, implying he was not present for this. Likewise the death of Nimrodel and Amroth are clearly old legends to him, events which happened as recently as in TA 1980, just 1000 years before the events of FoTR.



Now, more generally:

  * by his own admission canon Legolas is not well travelled (“'You have journeyed further than I” TTT).
  * He makes a statement in TTT which suggest he thought of himself as young before he joined the Fellowship ('So old that I almost feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with you children”)
  * Counter to this he mentions “'Five hundred times have the red leaves fallen in Mirkwood my home since then” and the statement “I have seen many an oak grow from acorn to ruinous age” - if these statements aren’t generalisations, he’s older than 500.
  * And finally, Elves do not produce children during times of strife. The last major period without conflict was the Watchful Peace between TA 2063 – 2460 when Dol Guldur was quiet.



Taking into account all of the above, I usually write Legolas around 1000 years, still pretty young for a Tolkien Elf, but old enough to have plenty of experience and leadership skills. For this particular tale I wanted to explore his vulnerability so I have pushed for the youngest date that seems feasible and set Legolas/Lith’s birth date in the final year of the Watchful Peace, in TA 2460. He is therefore 558 in the present day.

All other interpretations are equally as valid, of course, but this is just my take on it. I might not even be following all these points within the world of this fic, but I hope this has been interesting regardless.


End file.
